Fortinet has acquired Virtue AI, an AI security company focused on AI runtime protection, automated AI validation and security for autonomous AI systems. The acquisition is intended to advance Fortinet’s Security for AI strategy and its vision for securing the agentic enterprise.

The deal builds on Fortinet’s existing AI security portfolio, including FortiGate Hyperscale Firewall and FortiAIGate. Fortinet said the acquisition addresses the expanding attack surface created as organizations deploy AI applications and autonomous agents.

That attack surface now extends beyond traditional networks, users, endpoints, applications and cloud workloads to include prompts, models, agents, Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools, application programming interface (API) calls and AI infrastructure.

FortiAIGate, introduced by Fortinet earlier this year, protects large language models from threats including prompt injections, data leakage, model poisoning and excessive resource consumption. Virtue AI extends those capabilities across AI models, applications and agentic systems from development through runtime.

Virtue AI’s Guardian Agent capabilities include agentic system red-teaming across more than 50 sandboxed environments and 14 high-stakes domains. The testing includes simulated prompt-injection and MCP-based attacks against leading agent frameworks.

The technology also provides visibility into agents and AI tools operating in an environment, discovers unsanctioned AI applications and agents, scans MCP tools and source code for hidden risks, monitors agent behavior and blocks malicious tool calls before they act.

Virtue AI also offers continuous AI validation that identifies new risks across model updates and policy fine-tuning. Its automated red-teaming operates across hundreds of attack vectors and more than 1,000 risk categories, with multimodal testing and on-demand reporting for security, risk and compliance teams.

Real-time guardrails allow organizations to enforce customizable policies across text, images, video, audio and AI-generated code. Fortinet said the capabilities 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 and operate them confidently at enterprise scale.”

Fortinet said the acquisition complements FortiAIGate and strengthens its AI runtime security capabilities through Virtue AI’s automated validation and real-time protection. The company said the combined capabilities, along with coordinated enforcement and FortiGuard Labs threat intelligence, will help organizations secure AI systems throughout their lifecycle.

Financial terms were not disclosed. Fortinet said the amount paid as consideration is immaterial to its business.