1 View gallery <\/p>\n
![\"\u05e0\u05d9\u05e7\u05e9](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/BkQ3rppf11e_0_0_1772_1181_0_x-large.jpg\" "\\"Nikesh")
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Nikesh Arora. <\/p>\n
(Photo: Molly Goldberg)<\/p>\n
According to Arora, the deal will double Palo Alto\u2019s workforce in Israel, where the company currently employs about 1,600 people. He noted that even during the war, Palo Alto hired roughly 700 employees locally.<\/p>\n
Arora was brought in as an external CEO after founder Nir Zuk chose to remain in his role as chief technology officer and not take on the company\u2019s top management position. Before joining Palo Alto, Arora held senior roles at Google and later ran SoftBank, the investment group founded by Masayoshi Son.<\/p>\n
Soon after taking office, Arora launched an aggressive acquisition-led growth strategy that transformed Palo Alto into the cybersecurity industry\u2019s largest company, with an annual revenue run rate of about $10 billion. Over the past seven years, Palo Alto has completed a double-digit number of startup acquisitions totaling billions of dollars, many of them in Israel.<\/p>\n
At the height of the war in late 2023, for example, Palo Alto acquired the Israeli startups Talon Cyber Security and Dig for a combined $1 billion.<\/p>\n
The acquisition of CyberArk, announced in July, is the largest in Palo Alto\u2019s history and marks a departure from its previous strategy: it is the company\u2019s first acquisition of a large publicly traded company and its first all-stock deal. Following years of acquisitions, Palo Alto\u2019s Israeli R&D center has expanded rapidly and now occupies 22 floors of Tel Aviv\u2019s Alon Tower, more than half of the building.<\/p>\n
Asked whether layoffs were expected after the merger with CyberArk is completed, Arora sought to reassure employees.<\/p>\n
\u201cThings inevitably change when two companies merge, but it shouldn\u2019t affect most of the organization,\u201d he said. \u201cSome senior executives may make different choices, but this is not about 10% or 20% cuts. We have no such intention. The goal is to sit down with management and understand which roles are shifting and which remain. The good news is that we currently have no products in identity management, the area CyberArk specializes in, so there\u2019s no reason to cut there. On the contrary, we plan to invest more. Our intention is to invest in both teams and continue to be the largest cyber employer in Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beyond its role as an employer, Palo Alto has become a preferred exit destination for many Israeli cybersecurity startups. Arora addressed this dynamic directly.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe often get calls from companies that are about to close a deal elsewhere and ask whether we want to make an offer,\u201d he said. \u201cThey tell us, \u2018We\u2019d rather you buy us.\u2019 That happens because founders believe we\u2019re the right home. We give them significant responsibility and real influence, that\u2019s our philosophy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked whether Palo Alto\u2019s commitment to Israel could weaken following Zuk\u2019s departure from day-to-day leadership, Arora dismissed the notion.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things I\u2019ve learned in life is that you can\u2019t separate the company from its founder. Our commitment to Israel has not changed despite the fact that Nir is not actively at Palo Alto. Nir still lives in Palo Alto, in the culture, the products, the spirit. He\u2019s still a major shareholder, still available, and still has an office here. He wanted to come back and build something new. Would I invest in his next startup? With 100% certainty, any day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m the one signing the checks, and if that weren\u2019t the case, we wouldn\u2019t have hired 750 people here in recent years. Some of our most successful products are born, designed, developed, and delivered by teams in Israel. Israel is not the simplest country to operate, and not the easiest people. But it has some of the most passionate people, who can handle adversity better than most people in the world, and despite the adversity, bring their best to work every day and try to do a great job.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have never found the team from Israel not willing to accept feedback and desire to build the best product in the world, that trumps everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
On competition with Israeli startup Wiz, which was sold to Google for $32 billion, Arora suggested the rivalry may actually ease.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince I joined Palo Alto in 2018, we\u2019ve crossed the 10% market share threshold, making us the first cybersecurity company to reach double-digit market share,\u201d he said. \u201cThat means that in nine out of ten cases, someone else is still in the deal. As for Wiz, we\u2019re happy they\u2019re now part of Google, it gives us more room to operate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked whether Israel\u2019s military background remains an advantage for cybersecurity in the AI era, Arora answered unequivocally.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, because this is still a security problem,\u201d he said. \u201cNo one studied AI in university the way it exists today. Anyone who knows how to secure systems can learn how to secure AI.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a result, Palo Alto has also changed its hiring approach. \u201cWe no longer look only at formal education,\u201d Arora said. \u201cWe run hackathons and projects to test real capabilities. That said, it\u2019s far too early to dismiss higher education. Universities still teach critical skills beyond the profession, how to work in teams, how to deal with people who are different from you, and how to navigate complex human environments.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI firmly believe that the most amount of innovation in cybersecurity comes out of Israel. It\u2019s not for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-187359","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}