Fortinet acquires Virtue AI to protect autonomous AI

Fortinet announced the acquisition of Virtue AI on 17 September 2026 to expand its protection of runtime artificial intelligence and automated validation for autonomous systems. The purchase integrates into Fortinet's existing product suite, including its FortiGate Hyperscale firewall and FortiAIGate, a defense tool launched in early 2026 to shield large language models from prompt injection, data leakage, model poisoning, and excessive resource use.

Virtue AI adds four core capabilities to Fortinet's lineup: red-teaming tests across more than 50 sandboxes and 14 high-risk domains, agent protection and governance that blocks malicious tool calls, continuous validation covering more than 1,000 risk categories, and real-time safeguards across text, images, video, audio, and generated code.

Ken Xie, founder, board chair, and CEO of Fortinet, said that AI is fundamentally transforming enterprise computing and security must evolve just as quickly. He added that Virtue AI's technology will advance Fortinet's vision of continuous AI assurance across the full system lifecycle.

Fortinet plans to integrate Virtue AI with threat intelligence from FortiGuard Labs. Research firm Gartner projects that the market for AI ecosystem and agent security tools will grow from $2.8 billion in 2026 to $16.4 billion by 2030.