Google Cloud has agreed to a multiyear safety companies partnership with Palo Alto Networks as enterprise use of AI in cloud environments grows. A supply informed Reuters the deal is price near $10 billion over its lifetime.
The settlement marks Google Cloud’s largest safety companies deal to this point. Whereas monetary phrases weren’t disclosed publicly, the size of the partnership displays rising concern amongst enterprises about how shortly AI adoption is increasing assault surfaces in cloud infrastructure.
These considerations are supported by Palo Alto Networks’ State of Cloud Report, printed in December 2025. The report discovered that 99% of respondents had skilled at the least one assault on AI-related infrastructure over the previous 12 months. On the identical time, organisations are rising their reliance on cloud platforms to help new AI instruments, including scale and complexity to already stretched safety groups.
Securing AI from improvement to deployment
The expanded partnership focuses on securing AI methods of their full lifecycle, from improvement by means of to manufacturing. Somewhat than treating safety as a separate layer, the 2 corporations are aiming to combine safety instantly into how AI workloads are constructed, deployed, and accessed in hybrid and multicloud setups.
A key a part of the collaboration entails defending dwell AI workloads operating on Google Cloud. Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma AIRS platform can be used to safe AI methods working on companies like Vertex AI and Agent Engine. The instruments are supposed to cowl areas together with visibility into AI posture, runtime safety, agent behaviour, and mannequin testing. Developer instruments, together with the Agent Improvement Package, are additionally included, reflecting concern that safety gaps typically emerge early within the construct course of.
Community safety is one other focus. Palo Alto Networks’ VM-Sequence software program firewalls are being built-in extra tightly with Google Cloud to assist organisations apply constant safety controls in public, personal, and hybrid environments. The goal is to scale back friction for groups transferring workloads into the cloud whereas sustaining inspection and menace prevention requirements.
The partnership additionally addresses distant entry and distributed work. Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma SASE platform, which mixes networking and safety for customers outdoors conventional places of work, will run extra deeply on Google’s infrastructure. Prisma Entry operates on Google’s community, whereas Google Cloud Interconnect is used to hyperlink wide-area networks in clouds. Collectively, this setup is supposed to assist organisations hold safety insurance policies constant as customers entry AI purposes from completely different places.
A deeper operational and business tie
Operational simplicity is one other said purpose. By pre-engineering integrations between their platforms, the 2 corporations are attempting to scale back the guide effort required to attach instruments and handle insurance policies. The concept is to offer safety groups a extra unified view in environments, permitting them to maneuver quicker with out including complexity.
Palo Alto Networks president BJ Jenkins mentioned boards are more and more targeted on the best way to use AI with out rising publicity. He described the partnership as a technique to cut back the strain between quicker improvement and stronger safety, positioning safety as one thing that turns into a part of the platform moderately than a blocker. In his phrases, the purpose is to make safety “a local a part of constructing what’s subsequent,” with AI-powered defences embedded instantly into Google Cloud.
The collaboration builds on an current relationship that already contains greater than 75 joint integrations and roughly $2 billion in gross sales by means of the Google Cloud Market. As a part of the brand new part, Palo Alto Networks can be migrating key inside workloads onto Google Cloud beneath a separate multibillion-dollar settlement.
The corporate is moreover utilizing Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform and Gemini massive language fashions to help its inside copilots. The steps deepen the technical ties between the 2 corporations and are supposed to make sure that clients operating Palo Alto Networks on Google Cloud are utilizing methods designed to work collectively at scale.
The timing aligns with broader strikes within the cybersecurity market. Google has introduced plans to accumulate Wiz for $32 billion, whereas Palo Alto Networks expanded its AI-focused safety portfolio in October and accomplished its $3.35 billion acquisition of Chronosphere final month. Each corporations are responding to rising concern over AI-driven assault strategies and automatic threats.
Google Cloud chief gross sales officer Matt Renner mentioned clients are more and more searching for safety and cloud platforms that work collectively moderately than as separate layers. He framed the expanded partnership as a approach to make sure that organisations can safe necessary AI infrastructure whereas constructing new AI brokers with safety in-built from the beginning.
Analysts say the deal strengthens Google Cloud’s place in enterprise safety and AI infrastructure because it competes with Amazon and Microsoft. The partnership additionally carries private historical past: Palo Alto Networks chief govt Nikesh Arora beforehand served as Google’s chief enterprise officer.
Taken collectively, the settlement displays a broader shift in how enterprises take into consideration AI danger. As AI turns into extra embedded in each day operations, safety choices are more and more tied to platform selections which will form how organisations construct and shield methods for years to return.
(Photograph by Scott Graham)
See additionally: Amazon and Google workforce as much as reduce multicloud downtime
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