Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora has suggested hostile nation-states will possess quantum computers in 2029, or even a little earlier, at which point most security appliances will need to be replaced.

He would say that, of course, given that Palo Alto Networks’ shareholders would like nothing more than a quantum-FUD-inspired rip-and-replace frenzy as users defend against quantum computers’ ability to swiftly divine encryption keys.

Arora, however, said it on Palo Alto’s Q1 2026 earnings call on Wednesday, therefore putting it on the record as an opportunity shareholders should expect the company to cash in on and said Palo Alto will soon have a full range of quantum-safe products. CTO Lee Klarich suggested the market is ready to buy that kit, saying that over the last six to nine months he’s noticed “a pretty significant inflection in the number of customers that are starting to talk about this and plan for this from an urgency perspective.”

Arora even mentioned delivering quantum-safe products as an opportunity to rival the AI boom.

“From our perspective, AI and quantum are going to drive a lot more volume. So as the more bits that fly around, the more they need to be inspected, which means the need for bit inspection technologies is not going to go away,” he said.

Along with its results, Palo Alto announced it will acquire an observability outfit called Chronosphere for $3.5 billion. Arora said Palo Alto sent a team to assess Chronosphere’s tech and they came back mightily impressed.

“Generally, engineers have too much pride to tell you somebody else is good,” he said. “But our team came back and said, these guys are the best engineers to run into.” The CEO thinks Chronosphere matters to Palo Alto because it can provide observability of the petabyte-scale data streams used in AI applications without introducing troublesome latency.

“The 17-year-old observability industry was not designed for the AI era,” the CEO said, but he thinks Chronosphere is – and can do so at a third the cost of competing observability outfits.

CFO Dipak Golechha reassured investors that Palo Alto can manage its $25 billion acquisition of CyberArk at the same time as it ingests Chronosphere.

“On CyberArk, our integration planning is proceeding exceptionally well, reflecting the strong collaborative spirit between our teams,” he said. “We are firmly on track to hit the ground running post deal close, which we expect in fiscal Q3, subject to customary closing conditions.” Arora said that as Palo Alto integrates CyberArk’s wares, it will enable the company to add more subscription services – perhaps delivering a future in which a single firewall requires 10 or 15 discrete subs to various services.

Those services, plus support, delivered $2 billion of the $2.5 billion Q1 revenue Palo Alto announced on Wednesday, a result that improved performance by 16 percent year-over-year. The company predicted slightly higher revenue and growth for Q2. ®