joseph gabriel ragoncin
news editor
Akamai has agreed to acquire LayerX in a deal valued at approximately US$205 million.
The deal brings browser-based AI usage controls into Akamai’s security portfolio as companies look for ways to monitor how employees use generated AI tools, SaaS AI services, and autonomous agents in the workplace.
As more work moves into the browser, security teams face increasing challenges. Employees increasingly interact with large-scale language models, web-based assistants, and AI capabilities built into everyday applications. LayerX’s technology is designed to give customers greater visibility into interactions at the point of interaction.
Its software works with mainstream browsers, without requiring companies to move their staff to dedicated enterprise browsers. It is intended to allow organizations to maintain their existing browsing habits while adding control over web content, prompts, file uploads, and SaaS application usage.
This technology is also available in newer agent browsers such as Atlas and Comet. This reflects a broader shift in the use of enterprise software, as AI tools become built directly into the browser environment, rather than remaining in separate applications.
For Akamai, this acquisition adds another layer to its Zero Trust strategy. This works alongside the company’s existing Zero Trust network access tools, protection for AI applications at runtime, and segmentation of AI inference workloads.
Mani Sundaram, executive vice president and general manager of Akamai’s security technology group, said the partnership responds to customer demand for tighter control over employee use of AI.
“Our customers are adopting AI at record speed, and they’re telling us the same thing: Existing controls don’t provide visibility into how employees are interacting with AI tools and sharing language models at scale,” Sundaram said. “The acquisition of LayerX helps fill that gap and provides Akamai with a control layer to manage AI at the point of use, allowing enterprises to move at the speed of AI without sacrificing safety and compliance.”
browser focus
Much of the current discussion about AI security centers around model safety, infrastructure protection, and access control. Akamai claims that browsers are a big blind spot because employees often paste prompts, upload files, and engage external AI services in their browsers.
This is important for businesses that are concerned about sensitive information leaving their systems through the everyday actions of employees, rather than traditional breaches. Security leaders are also under pressure to avoid introducing controls that slow down staff or force changes to established workflows.
According to Akamai, LayerX focused on that gap by building browser-native controls that can monitor user activity without requiring infrastructure changes. Akamai believes this will increase customer oversight while reducing end-user confusion.
Tel Aviv hub
Once the transaction closes, LayerX employees, including co-founders Or Eshed and David Vaisbrud, will join Akamai’s Zero Trust organization. The deal marks Akamai’s fourth cybersecurity acquisition in Tel Aviv in the past five years and expands its research and development footprint in Israel.
The deal also gives LayerX access to a larger installed customer base at a time when demand for AI governance products is on the rise. As customers look for ways to balance deployment with policy and compliance requirements, leading cybersecurity vendors are positioning themselves around AI-related risks.
Akamai expects LayerX’s annual recurring revenue to reach approximately US$10 million by the end of the year. The acquisition is also expected to reduce Akamai’s fiscal year non-GAAP earnings per share by approximately $0.12.
These numbers suggest that the strategic rationale outweighs the short-term financial contribution. For large security vendors, small acquisitions in emerging categories often help fill product gaps quickly rather than providing immediate scale.
Or Eshed, CEO and co-founder of LayerX, said the company believes the use of enterprise AI is a key security challenge.
“Securing the use of AI by humans and agents has become one of the defining challenges in enterprise security,” Eshed said. “By combining LayerX’s technology with Akamai’s Zero Trust portfolio and the world’s most distributed edge platform, we provide enterprises with the foundation to securely deploy AI on a global scale. We are excited about the opportunity to accelerate our security vision through this transaction.”
