Palo Alto Networks announced on 21 July 2026 that it had agreed to acquire Embrace, a company that sells user-focused observability software for mobile and web applications. Embrace's real user monitoring (RUM) technology is being folded into the Palo Alto Networks Observability platform.
The companies did not disclose the price or the structure of the deal. At announcement, Palo Alto Networks said it expected the transaction to close in the first quarter of its 2027 fiscal year, subject to customary conditions. The company later updated its press release to say the acquisition closed on 27 August 2026.
Palo Alto Networks did not say what will happen to Embrace's brand or staff, and it did not say whether the product will continue to be sold on its own. The release described Embrace's RUM capabilities as being added to the existing observability offering.
What Embrace built
Embrace started out as an observability and data platform built specifically for mobile apps. Its software records what happens on a user's device during real sessions, such as crashes, slow screens and failed network calls, so engineering teams can see problems as customers experience them rather than only from server-side logs. Palo Alto Networks described the technology as designed for modern mobile and web applications.
In earlier funding announcements Embrace named customers including Hyatt, GOAT, Cameo and TextNow. When it raised money in 2023 it listed Discover, Marriott, The New York Times, Yum Brands' Taco Bell, Yahoo, Ibotta and Wildlife Games among its users. In 2021 it said it worked with more than 100 organisations. Eric Futoran is the company's co-founder and chief executive.
“To truly understand how their applications are performing, organizations need to see the whole picture - from the moment a user taps or clicks to what exactly happens on the backend.”
Why Palo Alto Networks is buying
Palo Alto Networks, best known for network security, moved into observability with its purchase of Chronosphere, a $3.35 billion deal first announced in November 2025 and completed in January 2026. In the Embrace announcement the company said its observability business had passed $300 million in annual recurring revenue in the third quarter of fiscal 2026.
Chronosphere's tools focus on backend and infrastructure data. Embrace adds data from the user's side of an application. Alongside the deal, Palo Alto Networks introduced Synthetics, a monitoring feature built in-house with its Autonomous Digital Experience Management (ADEM) team. Synthetics runs scripted checks against applications from locations around the world, using the company's distributed infrastructure, to test availability and performance before users hit a problem.
The company said the combination of RUM, synthetic tests and backend telemetry would give customers one view running from a user's tap or click to the underlying servers. It also plans to connect the platform to Cortex AgentiX, its agent-based automation product, so that some detected issues can be fixed automatically.
The funding behind Embrace
Embrace raised a $45 million Series B in October 2021, led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), with existing investors Greycroft, AV8 and Eniac taking part. At the time the company said it had grown its headcount by nearly 400% since its 2019 funding round, but it did not give a total.
In August 2023 it raised a further $20 million in growth financing, again led by NEA and with participation from Greycroft, AV8 (Allianz's venture arm) and Eniac. Embrace did not publish a total funding figure or a valuation, and neither company said how much Palo Alto Networks paid.
A crowded market for observability
Observability, the practice of collecting logs, metrics and traces to understand how software behaves, has become a contested category among security and infrastructure vendors. Palo Alto Networks said Gartner had named it a leader in the Magic Quadrant for Observability Platforms for the third year running.
Lee Klarich, Palo Alto Networks' chief product and technology officer, said in the announcement that organisations needed to see application performance end to end, from the user's first interaction to what happens on the backend, and called the plan to link monitoring with automated fixes an example of platformization.
