Five Companies That Came To Win This Week

For the week ending Jan. 30, CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel including Palo Alto Networks, Cisco Systems, IBM, Microsoft and Upwind.

The Week Ending Jan. 30

Topping this week’s Five Companies that Came to Win list is Palo Alto Networks for completing a $3.35 billion acquisition that extends the company’s capabilities in the AI observability space.

Also making this week’s list are Cisco Systems and IBM for major moves around their partner programs, with the Cisco 360 program going live at last and IBM updating its Partner Plus program.

Microsoft made a bold move in the AI processor space, launching its Maia 200 AI chip that competes with AI processors from AWS, Google and Nvidia. And cloud security startup Upwind raised $250 million in new funding that put its valuation at $1.5 billion.

Palo Alto Networks Completes $3.35B Acquisition Of Chronosphere For AI Observability Push

Palo Alto Networks tops this week’s Came to Win list with the completion of its $3.35 billion acquisition of Chronosphere in a move that gives the company a massive boost to its capabilities in AI observability and security.

The acquisition of the next-gen observability provider “accelerates our vision” in cloud and AI security, Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora said in a statement.

Chronosphere’s technology will be integrated with Palo Alto Networks’ agentic security platform, Cortex AgentiX, the company said. The Chronosphere Telemetry Pipeline will also continue to be available as a stand-alone offering.

Chronosphere’s co-founder and CEO, Martin Mao, has joined Palo Alto Networks as senior vice president and general manager of observability.

The widespread adoption of AI systems is creating dramatically greater observability requirements due to the differing behavior of AI workloads, according to Arora. And notably, those requirements are not being met by existing observability technologies that were built for a prior era of technology, he said.

The deal for Chronosphere, initially announced in November, comes on the heels of the cybersecurity giant’s planned $25 billion acquisition of CyberArk. The common theme is that Palo Alto Networks is aiming to lay a significantly stronger foundation for enabling AI and agentic adoption, Arora said in November in connection with the announcement of the deal.

Cisco 360 Partner Program Goes Live At Last

It’s official: The long-gestating Cisco 360 Partner Program, a next‑generation partner framework built in collaboration with Cisco’s global ecosystem, is now live.

Designed for the AI era, the new program brings simplicity, incentives, and easier ways for customers to find the right expertise across security, networking, collaboration, services, Splunk, cloud, and AI infrastructure, according to the networking and security giant.

Cisco 360 comes complete with updated partner designations, an enhanced Partner Locator tool, and a focus on AI‑ready data centers, future‑proofed workplaces, and digital resilience to help partners deliver impressive and predictable customer outcomes.

Cisco first unveiled the new program in October 2024, a full 15 months ahead of Cisco 360 going into effect. And some of the changes, including the elimination of the Cisco Gold partner designation, triggered anxiety among some partners. Cisco’s channel executives spent “thousands” of hours collecting feedback from partners on the new program, channel executives told CRN ahead of Cisco 360’s launch.

IBM Partner Plus Program Changes Include ‘Adopt Incentive’ Slated For July

Speaking of channel program upgrades, IBM this week revealed a host of upcoming changes to its partner program, including a new “adopt incentive”—slated for July 1—to give solution providers incremental dollars around the deployment and consumption of the vendor’s software-as-a-service and subscription portfolio.

The changes are part of a broader transition of the company’s Partner Plus program that’s expected to be completed Jan. 1, 2027.

IBM is accelerating its Partner Plus program with new incentives, expanded benefits and support, AI‑driven selling experiences and scalable co‑marketing funding, according to the vendor.

The vendor is investing in hyperscaler marketplaces, the IBM Agent Connect partner program for independent software vendors (ISVs), and other streamlined routes to market.

As part of the changes, IBM is revising its coverage model and improving how its internal sellers and partners connect to drive deals faster, according to the company. IBM also aims to remove friction for resellers with improved incentives, better automation and stronger offers and products meant to drive pipeline.

Microsoft Takes On AWS, Google And Nvidia With Maia 200 AI Chip Launch

Microsoft is boldly taking on Amazon Web Services and Google with this week’s launch of its Maia 200 AI accelerator chip, calling the processor “the most performant, first-party silicon from any hyperscaler.”

In announcing the inference-focused Maia 200, the Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant claimed that the processor outperforms homegrown AI chips from Amazon Web Services and Google across several key measures, including low-precision numerical formats that are important for a growing number of AI inference workloads.

The Maia 200 is the latest in Microsoft’s efforts to lower its reliance on third-party silicon vendors such as Intel, AMD and Nvidia. The latter company has dominated the AI infrastructure market with an increasingly vertical set of software and hardware solutions that leaves customers and partners with fewer customization options for its fastest GPUs.

Microsoft said it has already deployed Maia 200 systems in its U.S. Central region near Des Moines, Iowa, with the U.S. West 3 near Phoenix on deck for the next available region. More regions are expected to follow.

The systems are powering Microsoft Copilot and Microsoft Foundry workloads, according to Microsoft. They are also being used to run advanced AI models, including OpenAI’s latest GPT-5.2 models, as well as those in development by Microsoft’s Superintelligence team.

Cloud Security Startup Upwind Lands $250M Funding Round, $1.5B Valuation

Cloud security startup Upwind, which has seen a major expansion in channel partnerships over the past year, this week raised $250 million in new funding and achieved a $1.5 billion valuation.

The funding round makes Upwind “the first unicorn in modern cloud security,” co-founder and CEO Amiram Shachar (pictured above) wrote in a blog post.

The startup said the Series B funding round, led by Bessemer Venture Partners, brings the company’s financing to a total of $430 million raised to date. The company was founded in 2022 by the former leadership team of Spot.io, which was acquired by NetApp in 2020.

Upwind offers a comprehensive runtime cloud security platform, including an eBPF-based sensor that provides visibility into workloads, configurations and applications in real time, according to the company.

The new funding will enable Upwind to accelerate its efforts to scale, “expanding our cloud security platform across AI, data, code, and whatever comes next,” Shachar wrote in the blog post.