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 informed Reuters the deal is price near $10 billion over its lifetime.
The settlement marks Google Cloud’s largest safety providers deal up to now. Whereas monetary phrases weren’t disclosed publicly, the dimensions of the partnership displays rising concern amongst enterprises about how shortly AI adoption is increasing assault surfaces in cloud infrastructure.
These issues are supported by Palo Alto Networks’ State of Cloud Report, printed in December 2025. The report discovered that 99% of respondents had skilled no less than one assault on AI-related infrastructure over the previous yr. 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 growth to deployment
The expanded partnership focuses on securing AI techniques of their full lifecycle, from growth by way of to manufacturing. Quite than treating safety as a separate layer, the 2 firms 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 techniques working on providers 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 Growth 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, non-public, and hybrid environments. The goal is to cut 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 exterior 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 preserve safety insurance policies constant as customers entry AI functions from completely different places.
A deeper operational and industrial tie
Operational simplicity is one other acknowledged objective. By pre-engineering integrations between their platforms, the 2 firms are attempting to cut back the handbook effort required to attach instruments and handle insurance policies. The concept 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 mentioned boards are more and more centered on the way to use AI with out growing publicity. He described the partnership as a solution to scale back the strain between sooner growth and stronger safety, positioning safety as one thing that turns into a part of the platform fairly 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 instantly into Google Cloud.
The collaboration builds on an present relationship that already contains greater than 75 joint integrations and roughly $2 billion in gross sales by way of the Google Cloud Market. As a part of the brand new part, 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 corporations and are supposed to make sure that clients operating Palo Alto Networks on Google Cloud are utilizing techniques 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 firms 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 in search of safety and cloud platforms that work collectively fairly than as separate layers. He framed the expanded partnership as a means to make sure that organisations can safe essential AI infrastructure whereas constructing new AI brokers with safety inbuilt 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 government 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 that will form how organisations construct and defend techniques for years to return.
(Picture by Scott Graham)
See additionally: Amazon and Google crew as much as lower multicloud downtime
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