Five Companies That Came To Win This Week

For the week ending Feb. 13, CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel including Palo Alto Networks, Google, Databricks, Cisco Systems and Proofpoint.

The Week Ending Feb. 13

Topping this week’s Five Companies that Came to Win list is Palo Alto Networks for wrapping up its $25 billion acquisition of CyberArk in a move that builds out the company’s cybersecurity platform and provides security for AI agentic applications.

Also making this week’s list is Google for clearing a major hurdle—European Union approval—of its proposed $32 billion acquisition of cloud security provider Wiz.

Databricks is here for completing a successful $5 billion funding round and providing some financial hints at how fast the data and AI platform giant is growing. Cisco Systems showed off its technology prowess at its Cisco Live EMEA event with a new Silicon One G300, an advanced systems portfolio announcement. And cybersecurity provider Proofpoint is here for a savvy acquisition around AI security technology.

Palo Alto Networks Completes $25B Acquisition Of CyberArk For Identity Security Push

Palo Alto Networks this week completed its blockbuster acquisition of CyberArk, in a $25 billion deal aimed at providing a crucial missing piece for the cybersecurity giant’s broad platform.

With the closure of the deal, Palo Alto Networks now has an offering in nearly every major category in modern cybersecurity, executives have said.

The deal for CyberArk—initially announced in July 2025—is by far the largest acquisition in Palo Alto Networks’ history.

Crucially, the CyberArk deal helps position Palo Alto Networks at the center of providing security for agentic AI, according to Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora. The deal has been in part aimed at addressing major needs around securing identities and privileges for agentic applications.

The closure of the CyberArk deal follows the completion of Palo Alto Networks’ $3.35 billion acquisition of observability provider Chronosphere in late January.

CyberArk will remain available as a stand-alone offering going forward, while CyberArk’s capabilities will also be integrated across the Palo Alto Networks platform, the company said.

Google’s $32B Wiz Buy Gets EU Approval

Speaking of multibillion-dollar acquisitions, Google makes this week’s list for overcoming what could have been a major hurdle to its planned $32 billion acquisition of cloud security provider Wiz with European Union approval of the deal.

The EU halted the deal last year in order for the EU’s governing body, the European Commission, to review the acquisition for potential antitrust and anti-competition issues.

The decision allows Google to avoid a more in-depth EU investigation, which could have delayed the acquisition for months.

The U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission approved the deal in 2025. Google’s intention is to complete the acquisition later this year.

Google’s goal in buying Israel-based cybersecurity firm Wiz is to boost its cybersecurity technologies and capabilities around multi-cloud systems.

Databricks Exceeds $5B Revenue Run Rate, Closes $7B Investment Round

Databricks’ astronomical growth trajectory shows little sign of slowing after the data and AI platform developer disclosed this week that it surpassed an annual revenue run rate of $5.4 billion after recording 65 percent year-over-year growth during its fourth quarter ended Jan. 31.

The company also announced the completion of an equity funding round of approximately $5 billion, initially announced Dec. 16, that boosts the company’s market capitalization to a $134 billion valuation. The company also received $2 billion of additional debt capacity, putting the total value of the investments at about $7 billion.

Databricks said it will use the additional financing to accelerate development of Lakebase, the company’s serverless Postgres database designed for AI agents, and its Genie conversational AI assistant for interacting with data.

Databricks also disclosed that it delivered positive cash flow over the previous 12 months and sustained a net retention rate of greater than 140 percent.

The company also disclosed that the revenue run rate for its AI products exceeded $1.4 billion during the fourth quarter. In December it said its data warehousing business had a revenue run rate of greater than $1 billion in the third fiscal quarter.

And in another sign of its rapid growth Databricks said it currently has 800 customers consuming its services at an annual run rate of $1 million and 70 customers doing so at an annual run rate of $10 million.

Privately held Databricks doesn’t disclose detailed financial results. Industry watchers have long anticipated an initial public offering from the company. Co-founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi told CNBC in December that he would not rule out a Databricks IPO this year.

Cisco Debuts New Silicon One, Enhanced Nexus One At Cisco Live EMEA

Cisco Systems, holding its Cisco Live EMEA 2026 in Amsterdam this week, wins applause for unveiling its latest networking innovations including the new Silicon One G300, an advanced systems portfolio, new optics and an updated Nexus One operating model.

Cisco said the new offerings make AI infrastructure buildouts possible for more than just hyperscalers and large service providers, helping enterprises get the most from their network infrastructure, extend AI networking to every site, and power and scale their AI applications.

“We’re building networks with hyperscalers [and] we’re starting to build with some of the neoclouds now. But really where we see the next wave of AI deployment starting to happen is within the enterprise customer base,” Nick Kucharewski, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco Silicon One, told CRN.

“We’re still at the early stages of AI buildouts. We think that inference and agentic workloads are the next wave of technologies that are going to hit our customers. It’s going to expand and broaden the customer base, and Cisco’s here to be able to help that customer base really get value out of these AI technologies,” Kucharewski said.

Leading the new technology debuts was the Cisco Silicon One G300 102.4-Tbps programmable switching silicon, which has been designed to power gigawatt-scale AI clusters for training, inference and real-time agentic workloads while maximizing GPU utilization with a 28 percent improvement in job completion time.

Cisco also unveiled expansions of its AI networking and security product portfolios, including enhancements to its Nexus One data center networking lineup, and revealed what the company called the biggest update yet to its AI Defense and SASE offerings. Cisco also launched new AI‑ready collaboration devices, including the Room Kit Pro G2 and Desk Pro G2—along with real‑time speech translation in Webex that preserves tone and emotion.

Proofpoint Expands AI Security Offerings With Acuvity Acquisition

Cybersecurity tech developer Proofpoint wins kudos this week for its strategic acquisition of Acuvity, a startup focused on AI security and governance.

Proofpoint said the Acuvity acquisition will bolster its capabilities around delivering visibility and governance for AI agents, as well as providing security controls around agentic technologies.

The acquisition will allow Proofpoint to offer the industry’s first platform capable of “comprehensively” protecting all segments of the “agentic workspace,” the company said.

Check Point Software Technologies, meanwhile, earns an honorable mention in this week’s Came to Win list for disclosing this week that over the last quarter it acquired three early-stage startups: Cyata, Cyclops Security and Rotate, with technology in AI security and MSP tooling.