7 ms·
Palo Alto Networks agrees to buy CyberArk for $25B
- biggerbiggar 1y agoIn surprise news, Israelis in the tech industry have deep roots in Israeli military intelligence.
- gdbsjjdn 1y ago[flagged]
- 1970-01-01 1y agoWe're going to look back at these insane buys in a few decades as unreasonable, because they simply are. You can have an entire county for $24B.
- nfriedly 1y agoWhich country? (Not necessarily doubting you, just curious.)
- impossiblefork 1y ago25B is the market cap of Ericsson, which is probably responsible for something like 5% of Sweden's GDP. 25B might not be a whole country, but it's definitely a whole country's phone network and internet infrastructure.
- graemep 1y agoThere are lots of countries smaller and/or poorer than Sweden. There are a number of very small countries with GDPs in the hundreds of millions of USD range. If you could buy a country for say 10× GDP you are looking at the low billions in GDP which is Bhutan or Zanzibar sized economies. The problem is that countries are not often openly up for sale. You need military or political backing to actually get one. So you cannot literally buy a country. On the other hand, I think it is reasonable to say that this amount of money is the value of an entire small economy, or of the entire stock market of a somewhat bigger one.
- impossiblefork 1y ago>On the other hand, I think it is reasonable to say that this amount of money is the value of an entire small economy, or of the entire stock market of a somewhat bigger one. Yes. I think it's plausible to believe that it's a ridiculous valuation. That whatever the company has can be replicated for less money. That's probably true for many companies, but seeing as Palo Alto Networks probably has some kind of software arm, it seems reasonable to expect that they'd actually have the capacity to get what they want for less.
- 1970-01-01 1y ago1. Go shopping https://www.privateislandsonline.com https://www.privateislandsonline.com 2. Use the remaining billions to purchase a military force 3. Declare yourself sovereign 4. Export your goods and services at reasonable prices. 5. Be recognized by international organizations 6. You're literally a country for less than $24B
- newsclues 1y agoYou need to largely be self sustaining before step 3, otherwise, even with a military, you are exposed to blockades and attrition.
- lossolo 1y ago> 5. Be recognized by international organizations Good luck with that. No one has been able to do it for decades on unclaimed land like Sealand or Liberland. And you want to essentially annex another country's territory by force and be recognized? That's pure fantasy.
- 1970-01-01 1y agoIt happens every decade: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/newest-countries https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/newest-co...
- lossolo 1y agoThat's not an argument made in good faith. You call the collapse of the USSR into Russia a "new country"? How many of these so called "new" countries are just single billionaires annexing some island they bought and being recognized by international institutions? I'll tell you how many: exactly zero. Total fantasy.
- 1970-01-01 1y agoOk let's take a step back. Get a .int domain by doing something scientific. Build CERN 2.0 on your new land and you're going to be very welcomed by other countries. It should only cost 8-9B for that and then this step is complete.
- seydor 1y agoTry to cash out that pile of stocks and instantly the bubble pops. The values are virtual
- gjfkririfif 1y ago[flagged]
- alecco 1y agoAFAIK since incomes are stagnant, tax revenue is very dependent on capital gains. Governments and central banks can't afford to let the stock and real estate bubbles pop. Governments need taxes to a) keep the circus going and b) paying interests on the growing debt (a good chunk of it is held by the central bank).
- esafak 1y agoNo, we won't. As long as productivity continues to increase, so will market caps. Some countries are just left behind.
- pbiggar 1y ago[flagged]
- resource_waste 1y agoThank you for the heads up, I just uninstalled that app. I had it from 1 or 2 years ago and havent used it since. I feel like I'm being proven right that when selecting software, it should be open source and hosted on-site. Even if this causes problems, the alternative seems riskier.
- bc569a80a344f9c 1y agoWhat are you talking about? CyberArk is enterprise privileged access management. It’s not an app you install and forget about for 1-2 years. It’s certainly not something you just uninstall because you found out very basic information about the vendor on HN, because you almost assuredly run it because auditors require you to, and uninstalling it without a like replacement would be an extremely bad idea.
- yonisto 1y agoDo you doubt that he never ever installed the thing? But it makes him feel important or something so let it be.
- hypercube33 1y agoTo that point is there an open source PIM you'd recommend?
- mathiaspoint 1y ago[flagged]
- csomar 1y agoThis gives me Wiz vibes (https://www.wiz.io/blog/wiz-joining-google https://www.wiz.io/blog/wiz-joining-google), although CyberArk is much older (though despite being old, it is still unprofitable). In both cases, it seems the product is rather simple/basic but is being sold at insane margin to government(s).
- le-mark 1y agoIn 2024 Cyberark had $1 billion in revenue. Can anyone comment on how this $25B number makes sense for Palo Alto?
- evanjrowley 1y agoThere are plenty of Palo Alto customers who also use CyberArk. Perhaps the Palo Alto leadership believe vertical integration is very valuable?
- inglor 1y agoSure, Palo Alto can acquire Cyberark and then use its sales organization to up-sell its customers on CyberArk's offering. I've seen this at Microsoft where acquiring startups that provide capabilities and then incorporating them into Azure or Defender led to the usage of those capabilities skyrocketing and those particular acquisitions (not going to specifics because NDA) ended up being profitable.
- ameliaquining 1y agoI would sort of naively imagine that that would work at a smaller price tag but at $25 billion it would be tough to make it pencil out.
- caminante 1y agoI'm not buying a revenue synergies argument. Has to be more. 1. These synergies are hard to deliver, let alone 25x. 2. Paying 25x revenue implies you're forecasting way more (+30x?) in value.
- theMMaI 1y agoEven moreso when you take into account that CyberArk is not exactly a beloved product because it involves a lot of hassle. At 5-6B it may have been reasonable or simply a portfolio add that's cheap because of shared ownership/refinance but for 25B they could have bought Okta, which would have added much more value to their portfolio...
- 1y ago
- redwood 1y agoI'm surprised Okta hasn't expanded in this direction
- oneplane 1y agoBoth are legacy dinosaurs, it makes sense they start eating each other.
- crims0n 1y agoPalo Alto is a legacy dinosaur? Pretty sure they are the current market leader in both firewalls and SOAR.
- esafak 1y agoThere are market leaders in everything from DSL modems to tape drives. Most companies in 2025 don't own hardware firewalls. You're proving his point.
- crims0n 1y agoAre you thinking of Cisco or Juniper? Please link me to where Palo Alto sells DSL modems or Tape Drives.
- throw0101c 1y ago> Most companies in 2025 don't own hardware firewalls. You're proving his point. Then all the posts I see in /r/networking about which firewall product is recommended are figments of my imaginations? (The consensus recommendations are PA if you have the money, Fortigate if you don't.)
- 1y ago
- biggerbiggar 1y ago[dead]
- justin66 1y agoLet a thousand shitty obstacles to getting work done bloom.
- mikestorrent 1y agoThe second-rate identity provider that used to be Centrify and then IDAptive and now Cyberark Identity will now become its fourth rendition in six years; meanwhile, nobody will ever create a Terraform provider for it
- phatfish 1y agoIt's the end result of outsourcing and "zero trust". No one really trusts the Indian outsourcer with their internal systems. But they sure are cheaper, so the risks get mitigated by micromanaging and recording access to everything. This then spreads to all employees, even those with skin in the game, and then nobody is productive any more. Not just the contractors.
- jgalt212 1y agoIt's very hard to square the activity in the real economy vs the valuations in the stock market. As a stark example, look at the revenues of AAPL for 2019 vs 2024, then compare the market caps for EOY 2019 vs 2024. It's astounding. What's causing this? ZIRP, which is now gone, but lower rates ahead it seems, and the trillions in money printing. Little of the helicopter money ended up in consumers hands as evidenced by AAPL's revenue growth. Almost all of it ended up in the hands of the investor class.
- firesteelrain 1y agoAs long as this goes better than the VMWare merger with Broadcom. What a mess (still)
- SteveNuts 1y agoThe VMWare merger is easily the worst tech disaster in my career. VMWare was the market leader basically since they started and they never really stopped innovating and making their product better (I’m talking specifically about vSphere not the desktop products). It was expensive but worth every penny in my opinion, and it was literally everywhere. In enterprise IT it was just what you did, there was never really much of a question. Nutanix will eventually eat the lunch that Broadcom doesn’t even care to try to eat.
- bookstand 1y agoBoth are Israel based companies. It didn’t buy Okta as it is not Israel based company which is a better bet than this given Okta is really beaten down stock. Why did they realize now when stocks are at all time high. They should have honestly bought it a year back. CyberArk real price is around $250 and palo is buying for $450. The worst price one could buy.