Palo Alto's Arora courted Okta and Datadog before spending $28 billion on CyberArk and Chronosphere instead
The Information reports that Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora explored acquisitions of Okta and Datadog before both paths closed: Okta talks stalled on price, and Datadog's CEO was not receptive to an informal approach. The company went on to buy CyberArk for $25 billion and Chronosphere for $3.35 billion, the $28 billion the aggregator headlines refer to. PANW's recent share weakness is attributed to pre-earnings positioning, not to this report.
The Information reports that PANW CEO Nikesh Arora spent much of the past 18 months hunting large acquisitions, including approaches to both OKTA and DDOG. The two situations were not symmetric, despite the headline pairing them. Talks with Okta CEO Todd McKinnon ran through late 2024 and early 2025 and reached discussions of product complementarity before stalling over price, with Okta's market value climbing roughly 30% from about $13.5 billion at the start of 2025 toward roughly $23 billion during the period. The Datadog approach, made to CEO Olivier Pomel in spring 2025 when the company was valued above $40 billion, never became a formal offer; Pomel was not receptive.
The $28 billion in the aggregator headlines is not loose corporate spending. It is the combined consideration of the two deals Palo Alto actually did instead: CyberArk at $25 billion, agreed in July 2025, and observability vendor Chronosphere at $3.35 billion, closed in January 2026. Those total $28.35 billion and were committed across roughly six months, not in a single reactive burst. Chronosphere in particular reads as the smaller, cheaper route to the observability capability Datadog would have brought.
The strategic read is that Arora is willing to buy scale outside core network security, and that price discipline, rather than appetite, is what stopped the two larger deals. That is a meaningful signal for how Palo Alto competes with platform consolidators, and for how Okta and Datadog are valued as strategic assets by a buyer with the balance sheet to move.
One caution on the market read: PANW fell roughly 3.1% to 4.02% on August 25 and was down 0.59% in the latest session, but coverage of that move attributes it to positioning ahead of the fiscal fourth-quarter print due September 1, a stretched valuation above 90x earnings and about 24.7x sales, and insider selling. No source connects the decline to this report. What to watch is the September 1 print and whether Arora signals continued appetite for large deals on the call.
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