Hot on the heels of last week’s announced Galileo acquisition, Cisco is reportedly buying another AI-security-focused firm in the form of Astrix Security.

According to The Information, Cisco is looking to buy the Israeli cybersecurity startup for up to $350 million, with the networking giant keen to get its hands on Astrix’s identification platform for non-human identities (NHIs), namely AI agents.

Founded in 2021 by Alon Jackson and Idan Gour – both alumni of Israel's Unit 8200 intelligence division – Astrix’s system inventories agents and more humdrum NHIs such as service accounts, authorization apps, and API keys, along with any model context protocol (MCP) servers that may exist on an enterprise’s network. From there, it gives users context behind its discoveries, such as access permissions, while also prioritizing remediation with automated risk scoring.

Headquartered in New York with a research and development center in Tel Aviv, Astrix has garnered $85 million in funding to date. This includes a $45 million Series B funding round in 2024, which included backing from Menlo Ventures through its Anthology Fund partnership with Anthropic, as well as investors including Workday Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, and F2 Venture Capital. Workday is among its customers, as well as NetApp, Figma, HubSpot, Workato, and Boomi.

Rumors of the Cisco acquisition came on the same day the networking giant announced its intention to acquire AI observability firm Galileo Technologies. That deal is expected to augment Splunk's capabilities with real-time visibility and protection into the full agent development life cycle, safeguarding agentic AI to help ensure transparency and accuracy in network systems.

Cisco last year warned SDxCentral that the growing number of AI agent deployments will become equivalent to “80 billion” users, posing an identity challenge for tomorrow's networks.

With the rumored Astrix deal, Cisco may be joining the AI identity parade, following big-ticket deals in the last year such as Palo Alto Networks’ $25 billion CyberArk acquisition, and Cato Networks’ takeover of Israeli cybersecurity firm Aim Security.