Palo Alto Networks paid $500M for Thrive-backed Console, sources say

Palo Alto Networks paid $500 cardinal successful currency and banal to get Console, a two-year-old startup that uses AI agents to automate regular IT assistance table tasks, according to 2 radical with cognition of the deal.

The companies officially announced the acquisition connected Tuesday but didn’t uncover presumption of the deal. Since its founding successful 2024, Console has raised $29 cardinal crossed 2 rounds: a $6.2 million effect led by Thrive Capital and a $23 cardinal Series A co-led by DST Global and Thrive.

Before the sale, Console was valued astatine $157 million, according to PitchBook, delivering a accelerated instrumentality for investors including SV Angel, Abstract Ventures, and notably Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora, who participated arsenic an angel investor. Palo Alto Networks declined to comment.

The cybersecurity elephantine said that it volition integrate Console into Cortex, its level that uses AI to automatically observe and neutralize threats. Console’s agentic functionality volition let information teams to analyse and resoluteness alerts utilizing earthy language, giving Cortex “the arms and legs to present autonomous information outcomes crossed the full enterprise,” arsenic Arora described successful a statement.

Console was founded by Andrei Serban, coming soon aft his erstwhile startup — a code-security level Fuzzbuzz— was acquired by Rippling. The startup, whose customers included Ramp, Flock Safety, and Scale AI, automated tasks similar password resets, granted entree to apps similar Figma and Miro, and performed regular troubleshooting without nonstop quality involvement.

As a startup, Console competed chiefly with Serval, different ServiceNow challenger that deed a $1 cardinal valuation aft raising a $75 cardinal Series B circular led by Sequoia past December. Serval started arsenic an AI tech enactment instrumentality and rapidly expanded to supply AI assistance for quality resources, legal, and concern departments. Console’s acquisition leaves Serval arsenic the category-leader-to-watch among startups automating IT work management, 1 investor, who is not a backer of Serval, told TechCrunch.

Console is Palo Alto Networks’ seventh acquisition successful 2026, according to PitchBook. Other VC-backed companies scooped up by the cybersecurity behemoth this twelvemonth see Greylock and Lux Capital-backed observability level Chronosphere, astatine a valuation of $3.35 billion, and Koi, a cyber startup backed by Battery and Team8, for $400 million.