Palo Alto Paid $500M for AI IT-Agent Startup Console

Palo Alto Networks paid roughly $500 million in cash and stock for Console, the two-year-old AI IT-agent startup it announced Tuesday, TechCrunch reported citing sources. Console was valued at $157 million pre-sale, according to PitchBook, a rapid return for early backers.

Founded in 2024 by Andrei Serban, whose previous startup Fuzzbuzz was acquired by Rippling, Console raised $29 million across two rounds: a $6.2 million seed led by Thrive Capital and a $23 million Series A co-led by DST Global and Thrive. Its agents automate routine IT help desk tasks like password resets and access provisioning to apps such as Figma and Miro. Customers included Ramp, Flock Safety, and Scale AI.

Palo Alto is folding Console into Cortex, its platform that uses AI to automatically detect and neutralize threats. "By bringing Console into Palo Alto Networks, our customers can have a direct conversation with data and build agentic workflows in natural language that help alert and remediate issues automatically," CEO Nikesh Arora said. "This is the shift to software-as-an-agent, giving our platform the arms and legs to deliver autonomous security outcomes across the entire enterprise."

Arora had a personal stake in the outcome: he was an angel investor in Console alongside SV Angel and Abstract Ventures. Palo Alto Networks declined to comment beyond the official acquisition announcement. The deal is Palo Alto's seventh acquisition in 2026, per PitchBook, and leaves Sequoia-backed Serval, which reached unicorn status on a $75 million Series B, as the leading independent startup in AI IT service automation. It lands amid a wider run of cybersecurity M&A we've covered this week, with Thoma Bravo's Proofpoint in advanced talks to buy Varonis for $4.7 billion.