What Chronosphere Adds to Palo Alto Networks’ AI Push

Palo Alto Networks has officially completed its $3.35 billion acquisition of Chronosphere, a move intended to bring observability much closer to the company’s core security and AI strategy. 

First announced in November, the deal highlights how fast the conversation around AI pivoted to day-to-day operations.

Enterprises are deploying more AI-driven applications, which means the underlying systems are behaving differently from traditional workloads. 

They generate more telemetry and move faster, which makes issues harder to pin down when something goes wrong. That has put pressure on observability tools designed for an earlier generation of infrastructure.

Observability moves closer to security

Chronosphere was built for cloud-native environments where scale and data volume are the norm, not the exception. 

Palo Alto Networks plans to integrate Chronosphere’s observability platform with Cortex AgentiX, bringing operational visibility directly into its agentic security framework.

The idea is that security systems can only respond effectively if they understand what is happening across applications, infrastructure, and data flows in real time. 

Without that context, automation is limited, and issues often surface only after customers or users feel the impact.

At the same time, Chronosphere’s Telemetry Pipeline will remain available as a standalone product. The pipeline filters and controls telemetry data before it overwhelms downstream systems, helping organizations reduce noise and manage costs while preserving the signals that matter.

Nikesh Arora, chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks, said the acquisition is in line with what customers are asking for as environments become trickier.

“Enterprises today are looking for fewer vendors, deeper partnerships, and platforms they can rely on for mission-critical security and operations,” said Arora. “Chronosphere accelerates our vision to be the indispensable platform for securing and operating the cloud and AI. We believe that great security starts with deep visibility into all your data, and Chronosphere provides that foundation for our customers.”

A practical fit for AI-heavy environments

Chronosphere’s co-founder and CEO, Martin Mao, has joined Palo Alto Networks as senior vice president and general manager of observability. From his perspective, the deal is about taking a platform built for scale and making it available to a much broader set of organizations.

“Chronosphere was built to help the world’s most complex digital organizations operate at scale with confidence,” said Mao. 

“Joining Palo Alto Networks allows us to bring AI-era observability to a global audience. Together, we’re delivering a new standard — where observability, security, and AI come together to give organizations control over their most valuable asset: data,” Mao continued.

Part of a broader consolidation effort: Palo Alto’s acquisition strategy

The Chronosphere acquisition follows other big platform moves from Palo Alto Networks, including its pending CyberArk deal. Rather than piling on standalone products, the company is tightening the connections between identity, security operations, and observability.

In AI-heavy, cloud-native environments, the challenge is usually pretty simple. When something goes wrong, it’s hard to see where the problem actually is. 

Chronosphere adds visibility that security and operations teams can share, at a time when AI workloads are no longer experimental.

For a look at how modern security tools like this are being used in real environments, check out our recent roundup on how vendors are expanding Zero Trust into 2025. That article dives into how secure access, identity controls, and cloud-native defenses are evolving across enterprise networks, giving practical context on where observability and security intersect.