Fortinet has acquired Virtue AI, an AI security company focused on runtime protection, automated validation and security for autonomous AI systems, as enterprises expand the use of AI applications and agentic systems. The acquisition is part of Fortinet’s broader Security for AI strategy and is aimed at extending protection across the AI lifecycle, from development and validation to production runtime. Financial terms were not disclosed, with Fortinet stating that the consideration paid was immaterial to its business.
As enterprises deploy AI applications and autonomous agents, the security perimeter is expanding beyond conventional networks, endpoints, applications and cloud workloads. Prompts, models, agents, Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools, APIs and AI infrastructure are increasingly becoming part of the attack surface. Fortinet had earlier introduced FortiAIGate to protect large language models (LLMs) against risks including prompt injection, data leakage, model poisoning and excessive resource consumption. The Virtue AI acquisition adds capabilities aimed at protecting AI models, applications and agentic systems throughout their lifecycle.
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Virtue AI’s Guardian Agent technology includes automated testing of autonomous AI systems across more than 50 sandboxed environments and 14 high-stakes domains. Its agentic system red-teaming capabilities are designed to simulate attacks including prompt injection and MCP-based attacks against leading agent frameworks. The technology also provides visibility into AI agents and tools operating within an organisation. It can identify unsanctioned AI applications and agents, scan MCP tools and source code for risks, monitor agent behaviour and block malicious tool calls before they are executed.
Another component is continuous AI validation, which assesses risks following model updates and policy fine-tuning. According to Fortinet, the automated red-teaming capability covers hundreds of attack vectors and more than 1,000 risk categories, with multimodal testing and reporting intended for security, risk and compliance teams. Virtue AI also brings real-time guardrails that can enforce policies across text, images, video, audio and AI-generated code. These controls are designed to prevent harmful content, sensitive data, jailbreaks and vulnerable code from reaching users or downstream systems.
“AI is fundamentally changing enterprise computing, and security must evolve just as quickly,” said Ken Xie, Founder, Chairman of the Board, and Chief Executive Officer at Fortinet. “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.” Fortinet said the acquisition will complement FortiAIGate and add Virtue AI’s automated validation and real-time protection capabilities to its existing AI security portfolio. The company also plans to combine these capabilities with coordinated enforcement and FortiGuard Labs threat intelligence.
The move comes as the security requirements around AI agents and AI ecosystems expand. According to Gartner, “the market for securing AI ecosystems and AI agents is rapidly expanding; products and tools are expected to expand from $2.8 billion in 2026 to $16.4 billion by 2030.” Fortinet said the acquired technology will support its efforts to provide security controls across AI systems as organisations move more autonomous workloads into production.
