Inside Palo Alto Networks' Portkey Acquisition for AI Safety

Enterprises deploying AI agents in daily operations are facing new infrastructure demands as these systems gain decision-making authority across business processes.

To address control plane requirements for organisations running multiple AI agents, Palo Alto Networks has announced its plans to acquire Portkey, an AI gateway specialist.

AI agents in enterprise environments can now operate with minimal human oversight. As such, they are capable of making decisions and interacting across systems that handle business data.

This creates new infrastructure requirements that existing frameworks may not address adequately.

The shift towards autonomous AI systems represents a fundamental change in how enterprises manage technology infrastructure.

Traditional security and governance models were designed for human users, not for AI agents that can execute thousands of actions per second across multiple systems simultaneously.

Lee Klarich, Chief Product and Technology Officer of Palo Alto Networks, says: "As autonomous agents join the enterprise workforce, they also become a new, unmanaged attack surface.

"By integrating Portkey into Prisma AIRS, organisations will be able to confidently deploy and govern AI agents. 

"With Portkey, we are providing enterprises with visibility into all their agentic traffic and enabling them to control and protect against agentic threats."

Centralised infrastructure for AI operations

Portkey's technology functions as a control layer for AI systems. The gateway monitors, routes and manages every AI interaction within enterprise infrastructure. It will form part of Palo Alto Networks' Prisma AIRS platform.

The infrastructure processes trillions of tokens each month with low latency. This could make it suitable for real-time agent-to-agent communication.

Once integrated, enterprises may be able to enforce policies at runtime and apply access controls across AI workflows.

Nikesh Arora, Chairman and CEO at Palo Alto Networks, states: "AI agents have become privileged insiders, reasoning and executing on behalf of users and companies. 

"With that power comes a new category of risk. You cannot build an agentic enterprise without a centralised control plane to secure it."

Nikesh adds: "Portkey is a pioneer of AI Gateways technology. Their platform is battle-tested at scale, processing trillions of tokens per month.

"By integrating Portkey into our Prisma AIRS following closing, we are delivering the industry’s first unified enforcement layer to manage and secure every AI app and agent across the enterprise. "

Enterprise-scale operations management

Portkey's features include semantic routing and automated failover which allow organisations to maintain uptime of up to 99.99% for AI workloads.

The platform introduces telemetry and audit logging capabilities. Teams can track and inspect every AI transaction in real time.

This visibility applies across all AI interactions within an organisation's infrastructure.

Global AI governance through centralised management of models, agents and tools allows organisations to move from fragmented experimentation to production deployment.

The system includes caching and quota mechanisms to manage usage patterns while maintaining access to different AI models.

Infrastructure costs can be controlled through these systems. Portkey enables organisations to avoid unexpected usage spikes while supporting multiple AI models across the enterprise.

Scaling AI gateway infrastructure

Portkey views the acquisition as an opportunity to expand its technology within enterprise infrastructure.

The company's leadership sees the partnership as a way to establish AI gateways as a foundational layer for organisations running AI systems at scale.

Rohit Agarwal, CEO and Co-Founder of Portkey, comments: "Scaling AI in production requires a delicate balance between total flexibility for developers and absolute control for security teams.

"By joining Palo Alto Networks, we will establish the AI Gateway as the foundational layer of the secure AI enterprise. 

"Together, we will provide the infrastructure that allows every organisation to deploy autonomous agents with the confidence that their data and operations are fully protected."

The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 and following this, Palo Alto Networks will continue supporting Portkey's existing customers. The capabilities will be integrated into Prisma AIRS.

The companies did not disclose financial details of the transaction.

 According to an Economic Times report, Portkey may be valued between US$120m and US$140m, which represents double the valuation the company had in February 2026.

The move positions Palo Alto Networks to play a role in how enterprises manage and govern AI infrastructure at scale.