Why Did Palo Alto Networks Acquire Security Startup Koi?

Another big league cyber acquisition has taken place.

Global security leader and Cyber Magazine’s reigning cybersecurity champion for the BSFI sector, Palo Alto Networks, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Koi, a pioneering security start up based in Israel.

Koi's unified endpoint security platform secures all software, packages, MCPs, extensions, AI models, AI agents and containers.

Fortune 500 enterprises are among its customers, including OpenAI, making it a valuable addition to Palo Alto Networks. 

In recent months Palo Alto Networks also completed a US$25bn acquisition of CyberArk, a move aimed at reinforcing identity security and announced the purchase of observability provider Chronosphere.

This illustrates a multi‑pronged expansion strategy across cloud, identity and agentic vectors.

Agentic AI security 

In the age of unanimous industry adoption of agentic AI, enterprises are uniquely vulnerable as these autonomous tools which operate with access to sensitive data and the capability to perform any action. 

This makes enterprises uniquely vulnerable to agentic AI security risks making agentic endpoint security the new defence frontier. 

Koi, a pioneer at securing agentic AI can now bring to the Palo Alto portfolio the power to see and protect AI powered ecosystems.

“AI agents and tools are the ultimate insiders,” says Lee Klarich, Chief Product & Technology Officer at Palo Alto Networks.

“They have full access to your systems and data, but operate entirely outside the view of traditional security controls. 

“By acquiring Koi, we will be closing this gap and setting a new standard for endpoint security. 

“We will give our customers the visibility and control required to safely harness the power of AI – ensuring that every agent, plugin and script is governed, verified and secure.”

Koi and Palo Alto for agentic endpoint security 

The agentic AI attack surface is evolving, with threat actors trying to spoof agent identities and hijack credentials to  turn a trusted agent to a malicious insider.

Attackers are also known to chain exploits in agent frameworks.

Following the acquisition of Koi, its Agentic Endpoint Security will extend to Palo Alto Networks' Prisma AIRS security platform, to bring security coverage across AI operations. 

Koi will also strengthen Palo Alto Networks’ Cortex XDR, by providing deep visibility into the entire attack surface that is part of agentic and AI workflows.

Such critical capabilities will also be paired with improved security policy and malware prevention, that can push enterprises to innovate with confidence in their AI-native ecosystems. 

“We founded Koi to secure the next frontier of risk,” says Amit Assaraf, CEO and Co-Founder of Koi.

“In an agentic-first world, traditional solutions are blind. 

“Joining forces with Palo Alto Networks will allow us to scale our technology to the world's largest organisations, delivering protection that makes work on the modern AI-native endpoint secure by design.”

While financial details of the Koi deal have not been disclosed, industry reports suggest the purchase price is around US$400 m.

Analysts see the acquisition as a timely enhancement for organisations grappling with increasingly autonomous software running in production environments.