Brace for a new round of browser wars, according to Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora.
Speaking on the company’s Q4 FY2025 earnings call, Arora argued that the likes of Microsoft, Google, OpenAI and Perplexity are developing agentic AI tools that will require access to users’ browsers to perform tasks like booking a restaurant or reserving accommodation. The CEO expects tech companies will therefore add their own take on agentic AI to their browsers, but feels enterprises won’t be comfortable with that.
“What’s great for the consumer is dangerous for the enterprise,” he said. “No enterprise is going to love a do as you please browser which can run agents without control.” He thinks businesses will therefore decide they need secure browsers.
“You literally will come to a point where companies will say: ‘You cannot use a consumer version of this product’.”
He therefore thinks secure browsers are about to become a requirement for most businesses.
Which is convenient, given Palo Alto owns one – the Prisma Access Browser – and integrates it with its secure access service edge (SASE), its collection of network security products.
Arora is very keen on bundled products, telling investors Palo Alto’s “Platformization” strategy – which sees it sell collections of products – is going well. The company believes that when orgs buy its bundles they get better security, and the CEO said attackers wielding AI and agents mean improved infosec is necessary.
“We’re down to a twenty-five-minute attack,” he said. “So it’s no longer how much money are you spending to protect yourself. The question is: ‘How quickly are you going to find it and how quickly are you going to stop it’?” “If the answer is more than twenty five minutes, I have got news for you. These wonderful agents are going to come and make sure they’re able to exfiltrate data and breach your enterprise.”
Arora thinks defenders need a consistent security platform so they can run their own defensive agents to counter AI-fueled attackers.
“We can’t run agents on top of disparate infrastructure,” he said. “There’s no agent out there that understands three different firewall vendors in the infrastructure, two SASE vendors, browser vendor, and seven other vendors on top.”
The CEO therefore thinks “Agentic is only going to make this worse because there are agents that bad actors can deploy to try and breach you. So I think from our perspective, AI is going to act as an accelerant towards the desire to consolidate.”
Consolidation also means Palo Alto displaces rivals who offer security products that address niche infosec issues.
The company’s strategy produced $2.5 billion in revenue for the quarter, a 16 percent year on year increase, and $9.2 billion annual revenue, 15 percent growth.
Arora said the company is on track to win $10 billion revenue in FY 2026, making it the first pure-play security company to reach that mark.
Arora expects future growth to come from AI security products, SASE, and virtual firewalls, which he said are in favor because they offer faster deployment and more flexibility than hardware firewalls. ®