Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Pan Also our networks manages to fight the narrative of
Speaker 2: a downward.
Speaker 1: Draft in the markets. We're up a quarter percent.
Speaker 2: And look we're seeing the cybersecurity leader announced its intent.
Speaker 1: To acquire protect AI.
Speaker 2: It's expanding the company's capabilities in security basically combating new threats,
Speaker 2: I mean, an explosion in artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1: All of this as we get the CRSA.
Speaker 2: Conference underway, joining us now Nikesha or a Powo Alto
Speaker 2: Network CEO, You've got a lot to announce new security platform,
Speaker 2: but let's just go to the new announcement. In terms
Speaker 2: of M and A. You're going to go us an
Speaker 2: amount that you paid. I was hearing about up to
Speaker 2: six hundred and fifty million dollars.
Speaker 3: We're not going to talk about what we paid. Caroline.
Speaker 3: Nice to see you. Like we're again at a technology
Speaker 3: inflection point. We're all talking about AI. You had people
Speaker 3: talking about AAI earlier. And every time you have a
Speaker 3: technology inflection point, it becomes very important that we are
Speaker 3: able to come forward and provide solutions to our customers
Speaker 3: so they can securely deploy technology. And in that context,
Speaker 3: we're very excertively and aggressively working on both a build
Speaker 3: and buy strategy to build perhaps what will be the
Speaker 3: most important thing over the next few years, which is
Speaker 3: a platform that allows you to deploy I securely.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's talk about build versus buy and why
Speaker 2: was this asset protect AI so necessary to go inorganic
Speaker 2: at this moment?
Speaker 3: Well, kind of like if you look at what's going
Speaker 3: on in AI you were on before. People talk about LMS,
Speaker 3: people talk about deploying AI based applications. People trying to
Speaker 3: figure out how to deploy infrastructure, whether it's on prem
Speaker 3: or in the public cloud, with chips set to use,
Speaker 3: which model to use. All these are very important technological
Speaker 3: decisions which are going to underpin the platforms of the future. Now,
Speaker 3: when you put them together and you deploy them, you
Speaker 3: have to make sure that you're looking at the security
Speaker 3: aspect of every one of these things. Protector AI, after
Speaker 3: an extensive look around the market, we found was working
Speaker 3: on some very interesting topics which are complementary to what
Speaker 3: we've been building. People are building a great run time
Speaker 3: platform if we protect our customers. As the DEPLOYAI, protect
Speaker 3: OI was working on something similar where they're looking at
Speaker 3: all the models in the world, scanning them to make
Speaker 3: sure there wasn't bad stuff lurking in them. So the
Speaker 3: combination of the two, which we will integrate into one platform,
Speaker 3: actually allows us to be more comprehensive and we will
Speaker 3: offer our customers.
Speaker 2: I just want to get your birdside perspective here in
Speaker 2: a kesh, because no one can push us forward as
Speaker 2: much as you can in many ways to the future
Speaker 2: of agenic KI.
Speaker 1: And the fact that where are we to ultimately be
Speaker 1: protecting ourselves.
Speaker 2: There's demand for traditional basically farwall endpoint products of security.
Speaker 2: How does that shift if you're going from a user
Speaker 2: level to an agent level in this moment, Well, I think.
Speaker 3: That's going to be the buzzword for RSA Carol, and
Speaker 3: people are going to talk a lot about how do
Speaker 3: you make agents work? I think it's still unclear. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of innovation being put out in the market,
Speaker 3: whether as the A to A model, there's an MCP model.
Speaker 3: It's all wonderful buzzwords we create in our industry. But
Speaker 3: has agendic Yeah, Look, I've said before to me, Agendici
Speaker 3: becomes real when you start giving AI arms and legs,
Speaker 3: whether robotic arms and robotic legs or real arms and
Speaker 3: legs in terms of replacing human beings. And I think
Speaker 3: that's where the question becomes, can I rely on AI
Speaker 3: to accomplish the task without supervision? And that's where things
Speaker 3: will get very interesting and very hairy in certain cases.
Speaker 3: There it becomes important only to make sure that the
Speaker 3: agent you're giving autonomy to is something that you're very
Speaker 3: comfortable will act within the guardrails that you put out
Speaker 3: there for that agent. And then you got to make
Speaker 3: sure nobody can take over your agent and hijack it
Speaker 3: in a way that can make them do things you
Speaker 3: don't want them to do. So I think that's going
Speaker 3: to be the next frontier of cybersecurity as we get
Speaker 3: AI deployed in multiple places, how do we give autonomous
Speaker 3: control to these agents? How do we give them agency effectively?
Speaker 3: And can't wait for that world to happen, But it's
Speaker 3: going to be a whole new set of opportunities that
Speaker 3: will open up for us.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of names trying to make the
Speaker 2: most of this opportunity. A lot of them are the hyperscalers.
Speaker 2: A lot of them in many ways become your competitors
Speaker 2: as they add their own security offerings. Where do you
Speaker 2: sit in this whole frenemy environment.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, as we fascinating Caroline, logically, the cloud
Speaker 3: providers should have been our competitors and cloud security. They
Speaker 3: should have our competitors and endpoints secure, but they're not.
Speaker 3: They're focused on making sure technology gets deployed as quickly
Speaker 3: as possible, which is good perhaps for their business for
Speaker 3: all of their customers. Our job is to make sure
Speaker 3: that we stay in lockstep with them and work with
Speaker 3: our customers to make sure they can deploy technology in
Speaker 3: a secure fashion. Let's be fair if our customers have
Speaker 3: comfort that when they deploy AI, when they give autonomous
Speaker 3: control to AI to do some repetitive tasks or interesting tasks,
Speaker 3: it can be done securely. The moment we can provide
Speaker 3: the underpinning of trust, the underprinting of reliability, the fact
Speaker 3: that if you deploy with follow auto networks, there is
Speaker 3: a very high probability that it's going to be much
Speaker 3: safer than anything else. I think that's where the winning
Speaker 3: combination happens. So I don't see this as sort of
Speaker 3: a competitor environment for now with the hyperscalers. I see
Speaker 3: it as an opportunity for us to work together and
Speaker 3: make sure we accelerate the adoption of the technology, as
Speaker 3: opposed to have our customers be confused.
Speaker 2: Which way to go. I mean used to work out Google.
Speaker 2: You host your products on Google Cloud. How do you
Speaker 2: feel about their big splashy deal for wiz.
Speaker 3: It'll be interesting to watch. I have lots of conversations
Speaker 3: with people at Google about it, and we don't intend
Speaker 3: to change how we deploy our products. We buy infrastructure
Speaker 3: from them, and sometimes we see them in the market.
Speaker 3: Our hope is that our customers will understand that you
Speaker 3: want an unbiased product that can operate effectively on every
Speaker 3: cloud provider as opposed to something that is beholden to
Speaker 3: a particular cloud provider. We still need to solve for
Speaker 3: everybody else out there, so I think that's our sort
Speaker 3: of ethos. We want to be independent. We want to
Speaker 3: be somebody that can deliver the same level and capability
Speaker 3: of security across every platform there is out there, so
Speaker 3: our customers don't have to spend time trying to integrate
Speaker 3: all this stuff together, which is our entire around platformization.
Speaker 2: I love following what you're doing in terms of platform offerings, products,
Speaker 2: what you're doing in terms of well the latest MNA,
Speaker 2: but I also love following on social and perhaps whether
Speaker 2: you wanted to or not, you involved in the AI
Speaker 2: debate about whether we're going to get as much CAPEX spend,
Speaker 2: whether infrastructure is reality versus hype.
Speaker 1: Where do you stand on it right now? Nikesh?
Speaker 3: I think if you look around you, everybody is getting
Speaker 3: ready for a very large adoption of AI scenario because
Speaker 3: you see tens of billions of dollars being committed by
Speaker 3: people in terms of building infrastructure. I think that's right.
Speaker 3: I think we may get the sort of the timing
Speaker 3: not perfect. You know, you may build too much before
Speaker 3: it's all consumed. But I think it's headed in the
Speaker 3: right direction. I think short term, in this twelve to
Speaker 3: twenty four months timeframe, you could see that a lot
Speaker 3: of the investment that's going is going towards innovation. I say,
Speaker 3: make a smarter model, make robotics work. So you need
Speaker 3: a lot of power, you need a lot of compute
Speaker 3: to get to a place where these models become extremely useful.
Speaker 3: Once you get to a point where these models are
Speaker 3: extremely useful, the question becomes how do I deploy them
Speaker 3: in my business? How do I, as a regular company,
Speaker 3: regular customer, deploy these things effectively securely. I think that
Speaker 3: could take a little longer than people think because everybody's
Speaker 3: experimenting and we're not all experts yet. Now this is
Speaker 3: something that came about less than twenty four months ago,
Speaker 3: so we all have to get our muscle understand how
Speaker 3: this affects our business. How do I build robotic things
Speaker 3: that can do stuff for me around my enterprise? How
Speaker 3: do I build AI agents that can do stuff for
Speaker 3: me on my enterprise? Do I build or do I
Speaker 3: buy from somebody? So all that stuff will take a
Speaker 3: little longer to pan out, But when it happens, we're
Speaker 3: going to need all that capacity that's being built, and unfortunately,
Speaker 3: you can't wait to build capacity. You have to build
Speaker 3: it ahead of demand. So I think I think it's
Speaker 3: the right direction. Timing's still to be figured out.
Speaker 2: Well, thanks for sharing your expertise across all the subjects
Speaker 2: and the deal news nikesha or go enjoy RSA.
Speaker 1: We thank you. Paloelta Networks CEO