According to CRN, ServiceNow has agreed to acquire cyber exposure management vendor Armis for a whopping $7.75 billion in an all-cash deal. The company’s President and COO, Amit Zavery, stated the acquisition is a key move to strengthen its AI-native security workflow platform by adding real-time asset visibility and risk prioritization. The deal, which is expected to close in the second half of 2026, follows ServiceNow’s security business crossing $1 billion in revenue last quarter. Armis, which recently raised $435 million at a $6.1 billion valuation and surpassed $300 million in annual recurring revenue, will bring its roughly 950 employees to ServiceNow. This comes just after ServiceNow also disclosed plans to acquire identity security startup Veza, reportedly for at least $1 billion, aiming to create a comprehensive end-to-end cybersecurity platform.
The platform play is everything
Here’s the thing: ServiceNow isn’t just buying a security company. It’s buying a critical piece of data infrastructure. Zavery’s comments are laser-focused on the “platform perspective.” For years, companies have patched together security from a dozen different point solutions—one for IT devices, another for operational technology (OT) in factories, another for cloud, and so on. It’s a fragmented, reactive mess. ServiceNow’s entire bet is that by owning the asset discovery and exposure data from Armis, and the identity governance from Veza, it can automate the entire security response within its existing workflow platform.
Think about it. If a vulnerability is detected on a piece of critical manufacturing equipment—an industrial panel PC, for instance—Armis identifies it. That alert doesn’t just go to a separate security dashboard. It automatically triggers a remediation workflow in ServiceNow, which can assign a task, order a part, schedule downtime, and verify the fix, all while Veza ensures only authorized systems and identities can interact with that machine. That’s the “autonomous cybersecurity” vision. It’s a compelling narrative, especially for complex industrial environments where the line between IT and OT is blurry and dangerous.
Why now and why this price?
The timing is fascinating. Armis was clearly on the IPO path. They just raised a huge round, growth is over 50% year-over-year, and they’re a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant. So ServiceNow didn’t scoop up a struggling asset; it paid a premium to intercept a future public competitor and a key data source. $7.75 billion in cash is a monumental bet, but Zavery claims it triples their security addressable market from $30 billion to $100 billion. If that math works, the price starts to make sense as a market-consolidating move.
But let’s be skeptical for a second. Big tech acquisitions in security have a mixed track record. Integration is the killer, and while Zavery says they already have joint customers and integration will be “fast,” merging nearly a thousand new employees and a complex data platform is never simple. The closing date in late 2026 feels far away, giving regulators plenty of time to scrutinize it, too. And can ServiceNow, primarily a workflow and IT service management company, truly become a dominant security platform player against pure-plays like Palo Alto Networks or CrowdStrike? That’s the multi-billion dollar question.
The AI and identity angle
What really ties this together is AI. Zavery explicitly links customer AI adoption to security concerns. “Millions of AI agents are running around without any kind of control,” he says, describing the need for Veza. Basically, non-human identities (AI agents, APIs, automated processes) are a massive, ungoverned attack surface. Veza’s so-called “Access Graph” is meant to map that chaos. Combine that map with Armis’s real-time view of every device, and ServiceNow believes it can offer a level of proactive, AI-driven security that’s impossible with a fragmented toolset.
So this isn’t just two random acquisitions. Armis gives you the “what” and “where” of vulnerabilities across every connected thing. Veza gives you the “who” and “what they can do” for every human and machine identity. ServiceNow provides the “how” to fix it all. On paper, it’s a powerful combo. Now they have to execute and convince security teams, who are notoriously vendor-skeptical, to buy into a single platform from a company not born in security. The gamble is huge, but the potential payoff is too.
