Fortinet buys Virtue AI to bolster AI security tools

Fortinet has acquired Virtue AI, adding AI security technology to its product portfolio.

Financial terms were not disclosed, and Fortinet described the consideration as immaterial to its business.

Virtue AI focuses on AI runtime protection, automated AI validation and security for autonomous AI systems. The acquisition strengthens Fortinet's push into security tools for companies deploying large language models, AI applications and autonomous agents.

The move comes as cybersecurity suppliers race to address the broader attack surface created by AI adoption. That includes not only networks, endpoints and cloud workloads, but also prompts, models, agents, Model Context Protocol tools, application programming interface calls and the infrastructure behind AI systems.

Earlier this year, Fortinet introduced FortiAIGate, a product designed to protect large language models from prompt injection, data leakage, model poisoning and excessive resource use. With Virtue AI, Fortinet is extending that approach beyond model interactions to cover the development, testing and live operation of AI systems.

Broader coverage

Virtue AI's tools include red-teaming for autonomous agents across more than 50 sandboxed environments and 14 high-stakes domains. The technology also provides visibility into agents and AI tools running in an organisation, identifies unsanctioned AI applications, scans Model Context Protocol tools and source code, and monitors agent behaviour to stop malicious tool calls.

Virtue AI also adds continuous validation features that assess risks after model updates and policy fine-tuning. Those tools generate records for security and compliance reviews and test against hundreds of attack vectors and more than 1,000 risk categories, including multimodal scenarios involving text, images, video, audio and AI-generated code.

Real-time policy controls are another part of the platform. These are designed to prevent harmful content, sensitive data, jailbreaks and insecure code from reaching users or downstream systems.

Growing market

The acquisition reflects a broader shift in enterprise security spending towards AI-specific controls. Fortinet cited Gartner research forecasting that the market for securing AI ecosystems and AI agents will grow from USD $2.8 billion in 2026 to USD $16.4 billion by 2030.

That projected growth highlights how quickly security vendors are adapting products for customers building or using AI-driven software in day-to-day operations. Corporate concerns have expanded from protecting AI models themselves to governing how agents behave, what tools they can call and whether updated systems continue to operate within policy.

For Fortinet, the purchase also fits a broader strategy of integrating security functions across different parts of an organisation's technology estate. Its existing platform spans network, endpoint, cloud and application security, and the company is now working to fold AI oversight into the same structure.

Ken Xie outlined that position in comments accompanying the announcement. "AI is fundamentally changing enterprise computing, and security must evolve just as quickly. 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," said Ken Xie, Founder, Chairman of the Board, and Chief Executive Officer of Fortinet.

The purchase suggests established cybersecurity groups are willing to buy specialist AI security companies rather than build every component internally. As businesses move from AI experimentation to production use, vendors are under pressure to offer tools that can test, monitor and control systems once deployed.

Fortinet said customers already use its AI-native security platform to protect networks, endpoints, clouds, applications and AI deployments. Adding Virtue AI expands its coverage in runtime security, automated validation and controls for agent-based systems.

Fortinet described the transaction as immaterial in financial terms, but it marks another sign that AI security has become an active area for acquisitions as vendors broaden their offerings in a fast-growing segment.