Protect AI was acquired by Palo Alto Networks in July 2025.
The technology has been integrated into the acquirer's product line. New buyers should evaluate the successor product directly.
See the current product from Palo Alto NetworksProtect AI
AI security company acquired by Palo Alto Networks in July 2025; its model scanning, red teaming and runtime protection are now part of Prisma AIRS
Last checked October 15, 2026Quick facts: Protect AI is an AI compliance vendor founded in 2022 and headquartered in Seattle, United States. Pricing is available on request. Profile last checked October 15, 2026; sources are cited at the bottom of this page.
About Protect AI
Protect AI was a Seattle AI security company founded in 2022 by Ian Swanson (CEO), Daryan Dehghanpisheh and Badar Ahmed, who had previously worked at AWS, Oracle and DataScience.com. It raised $108.5 million: a $13.5 million seed round co-led by Acrew Capital and Boldstart Ventures (December 2022), a $35 million Series A led by Evolution Equity Partners (July 2023) and a $60 million Series B led by Evolution Equity Partners (August 2024), with Salesforce Ventures and Samsung among the investors. GeekWire reported 75 employees and offices in Seattle, Berlin and Bangalore in August 2024. Protect AI bought huntr, Rebuff, Laiyer AI and SydeLabs. Palo Alto Networks announced its intent to acquire Protect AI on April 28, 2025, the same day it launched Prisma AIRS, and completed the deal on July 22, 2025. It did not disclose the price; SiliconANGLE cited GeekWire sources putting it above $500 million. Ian Swanson joined Palo Alto as VP, Product, Prisma AIRS, and Prisma AIRS 2.0 (October 28, 2025) "completes the native integration" of Protect AI. Protect AI is no longer sold separately: protectai.com now redirects to the Prisma AIRS page, although some old blog posts are still online. Buyers should evaluate Prisma AIRS. **What it sold** Protect AI sold AI security, not governance. Guardian, built on its open-source ModelScan tool, scanned machine learning models for unsafe or malicious code and enforced policies on which models could be used. In October 2024 Hugging Face added the Guardian scanner to its Hub, and by April 2025 Protect AI had scanned 4.47 million model versions there. Recon tested AI applications before deployment with a library of 450 simulated attacks, and Layer filtered malicious prompts in production. Its earlier AI Radar product built a machine learning bill of materials. The huntr community, with more than 15,000 members in August 2024, reported AI and ML vulnerabilities. Palo Alto says the deal brought model scanning, posture management, AI red teaming, runtime protection and AI agent security to Prisma AIRS, but it doesn't map each Protect AI product to a Prisma AIRS module. **Open source** LLM Guard, Protect AI's open-source library for scanning prompts and responses, is archived: its README says the project and its Hugging Face models are no longer developed or maintained. **Frameworks** The Protect AI pages still online don't document a mapping to an AI framework, so this profile lists none. Prisma AIRS maps its AI Red Teaming attacks to the OWASP Top 10 for LLMs, MITRE ATLAS and NIST.
Featured in
Protect AI is ranked in the following independent collection.
Framework coverage
Protect AI features
Capabilities Protect AI markets publicly. Inclusion means the feature is documented on the vendor's site — not that it's best-in-class. Last checked October 15, 2026.
AI Supply Chain Risk
Assessment of risks from third-party models, datasets, and AI service providers.
LLM Red Teaming
Automated adversarial testing of LLMs for jailbreaks, prompt injection, and unsafe outputs.
AI Guardrails
Runtime controls that constrain LLM input and output to enforce safety, compliance, and brand policies.
Prompt Injection Defense
Detection and mitigation of malicious prompts intended to bypass system instructions or exfiltrate data.
Runtime Enforcement
Inline policy enforcement on AI inputs and outputs at request time.
AI Bill of Materials
Structured inventory of components, datasets, and models that make up an AI system.
Integrations
Documented by Protect AI in public product materials.
- Hugging Face
Protect AI pricing
Protect AI is no longer sold on its own; protectai.com redirects to Prisma AIRS. Prisma AIRS is licensed through a pool of Palo Alto Networks Software NGFW credits, with API-based runtime protection priced per billion monthly tokens. AWS Marketplace lists a Prisma AIRS API contract at $4,353.00 per 12 months without saying how many calls it covers.
Vendor changelog
Durable events we've independently sourced — acquisitions, certification milestones, product launches. Each entry cites a primary or trusted secondary source.
- product launch
Prisma AIRS 2.0 completed the integration of Protect AI
Palo Alto said the release completes the native integration of Protect AI into Prisma AIRS.
Palo Alto Networks - acquisition
Acquired by Palo Alto Networks
Palo Alto Networks closed acquisition of Protect AI, extending Prisma AIRS coverage.
Palo Alto Networks - acquisition
Palo Alto Networks announced its intent to acquire Protect AI
Announced the same day Palo Alto launched Prisma AIRS; terms were not disclosed.
Palo Alto Networks - funding
Raised a $60M Series B led by Evolution Equity Partners
Total funding reached $108.5M; Samsung and Salesforce Ventures took part.
GeekWire - funding
Raised a $35M Series A led by Evolution Equity Partners
Total funding reached $48.5M.
TechCrunch - funding
Raised a $13.5M seed round
Co-led by Acrew Capital and Boldstart Ventures; Protect AI launched NB Defense, a Jupyter notebook scanner.
TechCrunch
Pros and cons of Protect AI
Pros
- The technology continues inside Prisma AIRS, which Palo Alto says integrates Protect AI's model scanning, red teaming and runtime protection, and Protect AI's CEO now runs product for it.
- Strong on the model supply chain: Guardian scanned models for malicious code, and after Hugging Face added it to the Hub in October 2024 it had scanned 4.47 million model versions by April 2025.
- Covered testing and runtime: Recon ran 450 simulated attacks before deployment and Layer filtered malicious prompts in production.
Cons
- No longer sold as Protect AI: protectai.com redirects to Prisma AIRS, so new buyers have to buy Palo Alto Networks' platform.
- The open-source LLM Guard library is archived and no longer maintained, so teams that relied on it need to migrate.
- Palo Alto doesn't say which Prisma AIRS modules replaced Guardian, Recon and Layer, so existing customers should confirm what their licenses now cover.
- We found no Protect AI documentation mapping its products to the NIST AI RMF, the EU AI Act or ISO 42001.
Alternatives to Protect AI
Frequently asked
What was Protect AI?+
Protect AI was a Seattle AI security company founded in 2022. It sold Guardian (model scanning), Recon (AI red teaming) and Layer (runtime prompt filtering), and ran the huntr AI vulnerability community and open-source tools such as ModelScan and LLM Guard.
Who owns Protect AI now?+
Palo Alto Networks. It announced the acquisition on April 28, 2025 and completed it on July 22, 2025. The technology is now part of Prisma AIRS, and protectai.com redirects to the Prisma AIRS page.
Is LLM Guard still maintained?+
No. The LLM Guard README says the project has been archived and that the project and its Hugging Face models are no longer under active development or maintained.
How much did Protect AI raise?+
$108.5 million: a $13.5 million seed round in December 2022, a $35 million Series A in July 2023 and a $60 million Series B in August 2024. Palo Alto Networks didn't disclose what it paid; SiliconANGLE cited GeekWire sources saying more than $500 million.
What are the alternatives to Protect AI?+
Prisma AIRS is its direct successor. Other AI security platforms in this directory with model scanning, red teaming or runtime protection are HiddenLayer, Cisco AI Defense, Noma Security, F5 AI Guardrails and Lakera.
Sources
- protectai.com: redirects (302) to the Palo Alto Networks Prisma AIRS page (checked October 15, 2026)
- Protect AI blog: Protect AI and Hugging Face partner to secure the ML supply chain (October 2024; still online)
- Palo Alto Networks: Completes acquisition of Protect AI (July 22, 2025)
- Palo Alto Networks: Intent to acquire Protect AI (April 28, 2025)
- Palo Alto Networks: Prisma AIRS 2.0 completes the integration of Protect AI (October 28, 2025)
- SiliconANGLE: Palo Alto Networks buys Protect AI (April 28, 2025; Recon, Layer, $108.5M raised, reported price)
- GeekWire: Protect AI raises $60M Series B (August 2024; founders, 75 employees, acquisitions)
- SecurityWeek: Protect AI raises $60M Series B ($108.5M total; huntr community)
- TechCrunch: Protect AI lands a $13.5M investment (December 15, 2022; seed investors and founders)
- TechCrunch: Protect AI raises $35M Series A (July 26, 2023; AI Radar)
- Salesforce Ventures: Welcome Protect AI (founded 2022, Seattle, co-founders)
- SiliconANGLE: Protect AI rolls out Guardian, built on ModelScan (January 24, 2024)
- Hugging Face blog: 4M models scanned, Protect AI + Hugging Face six months in (April 14, 2025)
- LLM Guard README (protectai/llm-guard, via jsDelivr): "This project has been archived"
- Palo Alto Networks docs: Prisma AIRS AI Red Teaming (OWASP, NIST and MITRE ATLAS mapping)
- Palo Alto Networks docs: Token-based licensing for the Prisma AIRS runtime API
- AWS Marketplace: Prisma AIRS API ($4,353.00 per 12 months)
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