Fortinet, renowned for its role in merging networking and security, has announced the acquisition of Virtue AI, a company known for its expertise in AI runtime protection and autonomous AI system security.
This move is aimed at enhancing Fortinet's comprehensive Security for AI strategy and its broader vision for securing agentic enterprises. The acquisition builds on Fortinet's previous offerings, such as the FortiGate Hyperscale Firewall, to further expand its AI security solution portfolio.
Addressing the Expanding AI Attack Surface
The rapid deployment of AI applications and autonomous agents in organizations has significantly expanded the attack surface.
This expansion now encompasses prompts, models, agents, Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools, API calls, and AI infrastructure, in addition to traditional networks and endpoints. To address this, organizations must ensure that AI technologies operate securely and as intended in production environments.
Safeguarding AI with FortiAIGate
Earlier this year, Fortinet introduced FortiAIGate, designed to protect large language models (LLMs) from potential threats such as prompt injections, data leaks, model poisoning, and excessive resource use. The capabilities of Virtue AI augment this protection, extending security to AI models and agentic systems from development phases to runtime. Virtue AI’s Guardian Agent and product capabilities feature:
- Agentic system red-teaming: Conducts environment isolation tests on autonomous agents against vulnerabilities in over 50 sandboxed setups and 14 key domains.
- Protection, governance, and visibility for agents: Provides comprehensive insight and control over agents and AI tools, along with risk monitoring and real-time response.
- Continuous AI validation: Runs automated tests across a wide range of attack vectors, ensuring safety and compliance with every update.
- Real-time guardrails: Implements policies to block harmful content and prevent security breaches across AI-generated media.
Preparing for Market Growth
Virtue AI's automated validation and real-time security solutions complement FortiAIGate
Ken Xie, Fortinet's Founder, Chairman, and CEO, emphasized the impact of AI on enterprise computing, stating, “AI is fundamentally changing enterprise computing, and security must evolve just as quickly.” Virtue AI's technology is poised to propel Fortinet's vision of continuous AI assurance, thus enabling robust governance and protection over AI systems.
According to Gartner, the expected value of products aimed at securing AI ecosystems and agents will rise from $2.8 billion in 2026 to $16.4 billion by 2030. Fortinet envisions its acquisition of Virtue AI as strengthening its offerings amidst growing industry needs to secure AI environments.
Enhanced AI Security Offerings
Fortinet's acquisition enhances its existing AI-native Security Fabric, providing customers with more integrated security across networks, endpoints, clouds, applications, and AI landscapes. Virtue AI's automated validation and real-time security solutions complement FortiAIGate, reinforcing Fortinet’s commitment to lifecycle AI security.
Financial details of the acquisition have not been disclosed, but Fortinet noted the transaction amount is immaterial to its business operations.
Fortinet®, the global cybersecurity pioneer driving the convergence of networking and security, announces it has acquired Virtue AI, an innovator in AI runtime protection, automated AI validation, and security for autonomous AI systems. The acquisition advances the company’s broader Security for AI strategy and vision for securing the agentic enterprise, building on Fortinet's existing AI security solution portfolio, including its FortiGate Hyperscale Firewall.
As organizations rapidly deploy AI applications and autonomous agents, their attack surface expands beyond traditional networks, users, endpoints, applications, and cloud workloads. It now includes prompts, models, agents, Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools, application programming interface (API) calls, and AI infrastructure. Organizations need to adopt AI with confidence, keep it secure in production, and trust it behaves as intended.
Preventing harmful content
Fortinet met that need earlier this year with FortiAIGate, which safeguards large language models (LLMs) from prompt injections, data leakage, model poisoning, excessive resource consumption, and other emerging AI-specific risks. Virtue AI extends that security to AI models, applications, and agentic systems, from development through runtime, leveraging Virtue AI’s Guardian Agent abilities and key product capabilities, including:
- Agentic system red-teaming: Tests autonomous agents for exploitable weaknesses across more than 50 sandboxed environments and 14 high-stakes domains, including simulated prompt-injection and MCP-based attacks against agent frameworks.
- Agent protection, governance, and visibility: Provides full visibility into agents and AI tools running in their environment, discovers unsanctioned AI applications and agents, scans MCP tools and source code for hidden risks, monitors agent behavior, and blocks malicious tool calls before they act.
- Continuous AI validation: Identifies new risks across every model update and fine-tuning of policies, while generating audit-ready evidence to support security and compliance reviews. The automated red-teaming runs across hundreds of attack vectors and more than 1,000 risk categories, with multimodal testing and on-demand reporting for security, risk, and compliance teams.
- Real-time guardrails: Enforces customisable policies across text, images, video, audio, and AI-generated code to prevent harmful content, sensitive data, jailbreaks, and vulnerable code from reaching users or downstream systems.
Anticipated market expansion
“AI is fundamentally changing enterprise computing, and security must evolve just as quickly,” said Ken Xie, Founder, Chairman of the Board, and Chief Executive Officer at Fortinet. “Virtue AI’s technology will advance our vision for continuous AI assurance, helping customers govern and protect AI systems throughout their lifecycle while operating them confidently at enterprise scale.”
According to Gartner®, “the market for securing AI ecosystems and AI agents is rapidly expanding; products and tools are expected to expand from $2.8 billion in 2026 to $16.4 billion by 2030.”[1] Fortinet believes that anticipated market expansion reflects evolving industry demand to secure the AI era.
Real-time protection
Customers already rely on the Fortinet AI-native Security Fabric for integrated protection across networks, endpoints, clouds, applications, and AI deployments. This acquisition complements FortiAIGate and further strengthens Fortinet’s AI runtime security capabilities with Virtue AI’s automated validation and real-time protection. Combined with coordinated enforcement and FortiGuard Labs threat intelligence, it will give organizations the confidence to secure AI systems throughout their lifecycle.
Financial terms of the transaction are not disclosed, and the amount paid by Fortinet as consideration is immaterial to Fortinet’s business.
