Google Cloud has agreed to a multiyear safety providers partnership with Palo Alto Networks as enterprise use of AI in cloud environments grows. A supply instructed Reuters the deal is price near $10 billion over its lifetime.
The settlement marks Google Cloud’s largest safety providers deal so far. Whereas monetary phrases weren’t disclosed publicly, the dimensions of the partnership displays rising concern amongst enterprises about how rapidly AI adoption is increasing assault surfaces in cloud infrastructure.
These considerations are supported by Palo Alto Networks’ State of Cloud Report, revealed in December 2025. The report discovered that 99% of respondents had skilled a minimum of one assault on AI-related infrastructure over the previous 12 months. On the similar time, organisations are growing their reliance on cloud platforms to assist 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 via to manufacturing. Slightly than treating safety as a separate layer, the 2 corporations are aiming to combine safety immediately into how AI workloads are constructed, deployed, and accessed in hybrid and multicloud setups.
A key a part of the collaboration includes defending reside AI workloads working on Google Cloud. Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma AIRS platform will likely be used to safe AI methods working on providers like Vertex AI and Agent Engine. The instruments are meant to cowl areas together with visibility into AI posture, runtime safety, agent behaviour, and mannequin testing. Developer instruments, together with the Agent Growth Equipment, are additionally included, reflecting concern that safety gaps usually emerge early within the construct course of.
Community safety is one other focus. Palo Alto Networks’ VM-Collection 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 purpose is to cut back friction for groups transferring workloads into the cloud whereas sustaining inspection and risk 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 functions from completely different places.
A deeper operational and business tie
Operational simplicity is one other said objective. By pre-engineering integrations between their platforms, the 2 corporations try to cut back the handbook effort required to attach instruments and handle insurance policies. The thought is to present safety groups a extra unified view in environments, permitting them to maneuver sooner with out including complexity.
Palo Alto Networks president BJ Jenkins stated boards are more and more centered on methods to use AI with out growing publicity. He described the partnership as a approach to cut back the stress between sooner improvement and stronger safety, positioning safety as one thing that turns into a part of the platform reasonably than a blocker. In his phrases, the objective is to make safety “a local a part of constructing what’s subsequent,” with AI-powered defences embedded immediately 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 via the Google Cloud Market. As a part of the brand new section, Palo Alto Networks can be migrating key inner workloads onto Google Cloud below a separate multibillion-dollar settlement.
The corporate is moreover utilizing Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform and Gemini giant language fashions to assist its inner copilots. The steps deepen the technical ties between the 2 companies and are meant to make sure that clients working 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 stated clients are more and more searching for safety and cloud platforms that work collectively reasonably than as separate layers. He framed the expanded partnership as a method to make sure that organisations can safe essential 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 threat. As AI turns into extra embedded in day by day operations, safety choices are more and more tied to platform selections which will form how organisations construct and shield methods for years to come back.
(Picture by Scott Graham)
See additionally: Amazon and Google group as much as reduce multicloud downtime
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