Fortinet has announced the acquisition of Virtue AI, an AI security specialist that provides runtime protection, automated validation, and security for autonomous AI systems.
The move will see Virtue AI’s capabilities added to Fortinet’s existing AI security portfolio, which includes FortiGate Hyperscale Firewall and FortiAIGate.
The cybersecurity giant said the deal will strengthen its ability to protect AI models, applications, and agentic systems across the AI lifecycle, from development through to runtime.
Founded in 2024, Virtue AI’s platform includes automated red-teaming of autonomous AI agents, agent protection and governance, continuous AI validation, and real-time security guardrails across text, images, video, audio, and AI-generated code.
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Virtue AI’s Guardian Agent technology provides visibility into AI agents and tools running within an environment, while also scanning Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools and source code for hidden security risks and monitoring agent behavior.
The San Francisco-based company’s automated validation capabilities are designed to identify new risks across model updates and policy fine-tuning, with testing covering hundreds of attack vectors and more than 1,000 risk categories.
Virtue AI’s red-teaming capabilities test autonomous agents across more than 50 sandboxed environments and 14 high-stakes domains, including simulated prompt injection and MCP-based attacks against leading agent frameworks.
Expanding protection across the AI lifecycle
Fortinet’s latest acquisition comes at a time when organizations are deploying more AI applications and autonomous agents, expanding the attack surface to include prompts, models, agents, MCP tools, APIs, and AI infrastructure.
According to Gartner, the market for securing AI ecosystems and AI agents is expected to grow from $2.8 billion in 2026 to $16.4 billion by 2030 – an expansion that Fortinet believes reflects growing demand for security technologies as AI adoption continues.
Earlier this year, the vendor introduced FortiAIGate in a bid to protect large language models (LLMs) from risks such as prompt injections, data leakage, model poisoning, and excessive resource consumption.
With the addition of Virtue AI, Fortinet said it is gaining technology that complements FortiAIGate by extending protection to AI models, applications, and agentic systems, while adding automated validation and real-time protection.
Commenting on the acquisition, Fortinet founder, chairman, and CEO Ken Xie said Virtue AI’s capabilities strengthen the company’s goal of providing continuous security for enterprise AI systems.
“AI is fundamentally changing enterprise computing, and security must evolve just as quickly,” he explained. “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.”
Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed but Fortinet said the amount paid as consideration is “immaterial” to its business.
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