Palo Alto Networks Inc (NASDAQ: PANW) shares are rising slightly Thursday. The company and International Business Machines Corp (NYSE: IBM) announced a partnership to deliver AI-powered security to customers.
What Happened: After the market close on Wednesday, Palo Alto and IBM announced the broad-reaching partnership that aims to help address increasingly sophisticated threats and evolving attack surfaces by offering a comprehensive security platform underpinned by AI.
Palo Alto Networks and IBM said they aim to help streamline and transform security operations, stop threats at scale and accelerate incident remediation for their customers with a complete AI-powered approach.
As part of the partnership, Palo Alto has agreed to acquire IBM's QRadar SaaS assets, including QRadar intellectual property rights. Upon closing, Palo Alto and IBM will facilitate the migration of QRadar SaaS clients to Cortex XSIAM, a next-generation security operations platform, with advanced AI-powered threat protection supported by 3,000 out-of-the-box detectors.
"The security industry is at an inflection point where AI will transform businesses and deliver outcomes not seen before. It's a moment to accelerate growth and innovation," said Nikesh Arora, chairman and CEO of Palo Alto.
"Together with IBM, we will capitalize on this trend, combining our leading security solutions with IBM's pioneering watsonx AI platform and premier services to drive the future of security platformization with complete, AI-powered, secure-by-design offerings."
On Thursday, Keybanc analyst Michael Turits maintained Palo Alto with an Overweight rating and raised the price target from $355 to $384.
Palo Alto is set to report its fiscal third-quarter financial results after the market close on May 20. The company is expected to report earnings of $1.25 per share and revenue of $1.967 billion, according to analyst estimates from Benzinga Pro.
PANW Price Action: Palo Alto shares were up 0.78% at $314.75 at the time of publication, according to Benzinga Pro.