Databricks, a key player in the Data and AI sectors, has announced its intention to acquire Panther, an innovative AI-powered Security Operations Center (SOC) platform. This move aims to advance Databricks' ambitious security lakehouse vision—a revolutionary approach to security software that aims to replace outdated SIEM systems with more agile solutions.
The partnership between Databricks and Panther is set to empower organizations to identify more threats, scrutinize each alert comprehensively, and counteract AI-driven attacks using AI tools. Panther, which has earned trust from prominent security teams including Anthropic, is recognized for its capability to safeguard AI-native ecosystems. This acquisition marks Databricks' third strategic move in the security arena, reinforcing its AI security offerings and dedication to cybersecurity advancements.
Challenges of AI-Driven Attacks
As attackers leverage AI to explore new vulnerabilities in cloud, SaaS, and AI systems, current defense mechanisms struggle to keep pace.
This acquisition marks Databricks' third strategic move in the security arena
Conventional SIEM systems are hampered by high expenses, limited data, and labor-intensive processes, causing many organizations to overlook critical security data. Traditional SOC workflows, reliant on manual processes, further exacerbate this issue. Panther addresses this by replacing costly, outdated SIEM stacks with innovative, agent-driven SOC processes, empowering teams to respond quickly and at scale to emerging threats.
Vision for a Security Lakehouse
Ali Ghodsi, Co-founder and CEO of Databricks, stated, "Legacy SIEM was never designed for AI." He highlighted the company's commitment to its Lakewatch initiative and the security lakehouse vision, emphasizing how Panther will enhance their capabilities to process all data and automate SOC workflows. Together, they aim to provide a robust platform to combat sophisticated agentic attacks.
Jack Naglieri, Founder and CEO of Panther, expressed enthusiasm in joining Databricks, noting the transformative impact of AI on threat landscapes and the potential to arm defenders with advanced tools for detecting, investigating, and responding to threats effectively.
Innovations in Security Operations
Databricks introduced Lakewatch, a security lakehouse platform designed to consolidate security data
Tim Nguyen, Head of Defense at Anthropic, remarked on the necessity of programmable and deeply integrated security operations to support advanced AI development, noting Panther's role in bringing a software engineering approach to detection and response.
Earlier in the year, Databricks introduced Lakewatch, a security lakehouse platform designed to consolidate security, IT, and enterprise data for enhanced detection and response capabilities, aiming to streamline data management and reduce overall costs.
Accelerating Cloud Native Security
Incorporating Panther will further propel Databricks' security lakehouse vision by embedding agentic workflows within SOC operations, enhancing automatic alert triage, context gathering, and next-step planning. Panther's pre-built integrations across cloud infrastructure and SaaS applications ensure comprehensive data coverage, allowing instant ingestion without complex mapping.
The Panther acquisition builds upon Databricks' recent strategic investments in security, following the acquisitions of Antimatter and SiftD.ai. More insights will be shared at the upcoming Data + AI Summit in San Francisco. The closure of the acquisition is contingent upon standard regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.
Databricks, the Data and AI company, today announces intent to acquire Panther, a pioneer AI SOC platform. The acquisition will advance the company’s vision for the security lakehouse, a new category of security software that is disrupting legacy SIEM with an agentic approach.
Together, Databricks and Panther will help organizations detect more threats, investigate every alert, and fight AI-driven attacks with AI. Trusted by leading security teams — including Anthropic — Panther has proven it can defend the most demanding, AI-native environments. Panther is the third security acquisition announced by Databricks, strengthening its AI security product team and deepening its investment in security.
AI-native environments
AI-driven attacks are evolving faster than human-led defences can keep up. Attackers now use AI agents to find new vulnerabilities and attack paths across cloud, SaaS, and AI systems. Meanwhile, SIEMs are held back by high costs, limited data, and manual, labor-intensive workflows. As a result, most organizations analyze only a fraction of their security data—leaving them blind to many of the new agent-driven attacks in their environments.
Today's SOC workflows make this worse, because they're still largely manual: teams hand-manage data ingestion, hand-write detection rules, and investigate every alert by hand. With legacy tools, SOC teams simply can't keep pace with new threats. Panther closes the gap by replacing costly, closed SIEM stacks with agentic SOC workflows—so defenders can investigate every alert and disrupt attacks at the speed and scale of AI.
Security lakehouse vision
“Legacy SIEM was never designed for AI,” said Ali Ghodsi, Co founder and CEO of Databricks. “Databricks, which has the trust of 70% of the Fortune 500 in data and AI, is doubling down on Lakewatch and our security lakehouse vision. With Panther, we enhance and expand our ability to analyze all data and automate SOC workflows. Together, we can offer the best platform to help defend the world against agentic attacks.”
“We are thrilled to join Databricks and help accelerate the security lakehouse vision,” said Jack Naglieri, Founder and CEO of Panther. “The SOC is at an inflection point: AI is changing how attacks are launched and defenders can now finally keep pace with them. Together with Databricks, we can arm defenders with sophisticated agents that scale detection, investigation, and response.”
AI-driven attackers
"Building frontier AI requires security operations that are programmable and deeply integrated with the way modern engineering teams work,” said Tim Nguyen, Head of Defense at Anthropic. “Panther has helped us bring a software engineering approach to detection and response, giving our team the flexibility to adapt quickly as our environment evolves."
Earlier this year, Databricks introduced Lakewatch, its security lakehouse designed to help organizations defend against increasingly sophisticated AI-driven attackers. Lakewatch unifies security, IT, and business data into a single, governed lakehouse for agentic detection and response, enabling customers to ingest, retain, and analyze unprecedented volumes of unstructured data while reducing total cost of ownership.
Cloud native security operations
Adding Panther accelerates Databricks’ security lakehouse vision in several key ways:
- Agentic workflows designed for SOC: Lakewatch and Panther embed AI agents directly into core SOC workflows so they can automatically triage alerts, gather context, and propose next steps.
- Broad, high-fidelity data coverage: 100+ pre-built, deeply parsed integrations across critical cloud infrastructure, identity providers, endpoints, networks, and SaaS applications, delivering immediate, out-of-the-box ingestion without the complex mapping required by legacy SIEMs.
- Top security team: The Panther team of engineers and former SOC analysts brings deep experience in open source and cloud native security operations. Founded by the leader of the open source StreamAlert project originally created at Airbnb, Panther has grown into a cloud native SIEM and AI SOC platform built on detection as code and security data lakes.
The acquisition of Panther builds on Databricks’ recent security investments, including its acquisitions of Antimatter and SiftD.ai. Hear more this week at Data + AI Summit in San Francisco. The proposed acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including any required regulatory clearances.
