Palo Alto Networks surpassed Wall Street’s fiscal third-quarter results as artificial intelligence threats drive demand for sophisticated cybersecurity tools.

Shares rose as much as 12% in after-hours trading, but later pulled back.

Here’s how the company did versus LSEG estimates:

• Earnings per share: 85 cents adjusted vs. 80 cents expected
• Revenue: $3.00 billion vs. $2.94 billion expected

Revenue grew 31% from a year ago, including $388 million from its recent CyberArk and Chronosphere acquisitions, the cybersecurity company said. The company reported a net loss of $177 million, a loss of 22 cents per share, down from net income of $262 million, or 37 cents per share, a year ago.

The beat comes on lowered expectations, after the company gave disappointing guidance in February that fell short of analyst estimates.

Palo Alto issued stronger-than-expected guidance for the fourth quarter. The company expects revenue to range between $3.35 billion and $ 3.36 billion, versus a $3.28 billion estimate. Full-year guidance was also lifted, coming in at $11.42 billion to $11.43 billion.

 “The latest advancements at the AI frontier have increased the level of urgency around cybersecurity, and redefined the shape of the industry for the coming years,” CEO Nikesh Arora said in a release.

Palo Alto shares have rallied more than 60% this year and over 80% this quarter as sophisticated cyber tools, capable of exposing software flaws, force companies to invest in cyber tools.

Earlier in the year, the sector sold off on worries that AI would massively disrupt software, including cybersecurity.

Over 1,200 customers have reached out to Palo Alto in the wake of Mythos, and the company has held 800 meetings over the last six weeks to prepare for the shifting AI landscape, Nikesh told analysts on Tuesday.

Both Palo Alto and its competitors are leaning into more AI acquisitions to beef up their suite of tools as the agentic revolution paves the way for attackers to carry out quicker and faster cyberattacks. Within the last year, the company bought Israeli identity security platform CyberArk for $25 billion.

Other significant acquisitions include KOI Security, AI observability platform Chronosphere and Protect AI. The company rebranded CyberArk as Idira last month.

Palo Alto is an early participant in Anthropic’s Project Glasswing, which is aimed at testing the potential cybersecurity ramifications of its powerful Mythos model.

The model, which spiked concerns that hackers could use the tool to accelerate attacks, opened to 150 more partners for testing on Tuesday.

A group of regional sports networks is set to wind down, marking the demise of a once-lucrative business and leaving the fate of local baseball, basketball and hockey broadcasts in the balance — even as live sports command the highest TV ratings.

RSNs have felt arguably the greatest pressure from the losses that plague the pay TV bundle as consumers switch to streaming. Now, the model is in rapid decline.

Last week, as the 2026 MLB season got underway, the league announced it was taking over media distribution for 14 teams. In large part, this was the result of the inevitable wind down of Main Street Sports — formerly Fox Sports networks, which have been through different owners since 2019 and several name changes since 2021.

Main Street emerged from bankruptcy protection in late 2024, and despite touting subscriber growth as recently as last spring, the operator faced another liquidity crunch earlier this year when MLB rights payments were due, according to people familiar with the matter.

Main Street owned roughly 15 channels, but at one point aired 30 MLB, NHL and NBA teams after exiting bankruptcy.

Though the company was in sale talks earlier this year with the likes of DAZN and Fubo, the discussions never amounted to a deal, according to the people. 

Rumors of liquidation circulated — in the middle of the NBA and NHL seasons — but Main Street has so far been able to stave that off. Instead, MLB teams went their separate ways at the beginning of the season, with some shifting to MLB distribution and some, like the Los Angeles Angels and Atlanta Braves, taking over the production and distribution of their own regional channels.

The NBA and NHL regular seasons are expected to be completed through their current Main Street-owned networks — now branded as FanDuel Sports networks. But after the NBA regular season and the first round of the NHL playoffs, Main Street plans to begin an earnest end-of-business process, one of the people said. 

The future for the remaining NBA and NHL teams are yet to be determined, although some are likely to find homes with broadcast station owners that have been acquiring local rights, such as Scripps, according to a person close to the negotiations. 

And the end of the RSN model doesn’t stop there.

The fees long paid by the networks to host games have propped up professional sports leagues for a long time — especially MLB, known to have some of the most…

Meta has acquired Moltbook, the viral social media platform for artificial intelligence agents, the company confirmed Tuesday.

The deal brings Moltbook CEO Matt Schlicht and COO Ben Parr into Meta Superintelligence Labs, the company’s AI unit launched last year.

“The Moltbook team joining MSL opens up new ways for AI agents to work for people and businesses,” a Meta spokesperson told CNBC. “Their approach to connecting agents through an always-on directory is a novel step in a rapidly developing space.”

Axios was first to report the deal.

Moltbook was built off of OpenClaw, a separate project that was marketed as “the AI that actually does things.” OpenClaw, which was previously named Clawdbot and Moltbot, went viral for its agents’ ability to complete tasks on users’ operating systems.

OpenClaw’s virality helped push AI agents into the mainstream, where large language models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT have largely dominated the conversation. OpenClaw’s ability to act as an assistant by managing calendars, sending emails and online shopping opened new doors for many users.

The autonomy of the agents, and the ability for them to talk to one another in forums like Moltbook, drew concern from some about the future of AI.

Elon Musk said the platform indicates “the very early stages of singularity.” Singularity is the hypothetical point when AI surpasses human intelligence, causing unpredictable change.

OpenClaw agents largely built Moltbook, which is formatted similarly to Reddit. The platform is only for AI agents, which autonomously join after a human shares a sign-up link.

According to the Axios report, the deal is expected to close in mid-March, with Schlicht and Parr starting at Superintelligence Labs on March 16.

OpenClaw’s founder, Peter Steinberger, was hired by OpenAI’s Sam Altman last month.

Correction: This story has been revised to reflect that the name of Moltbook’s CEO is Matt Schlicht. A previous version misspelled his name.

Palo Alto Networks beat Wall Street’s fiscal second-quarter estimates after the bell on Tuesday but shares fell 7% on disappointing guidance.

Here’s how the company did versus LSEG estimates:

• Earnings per share: $1.03 per share excluding items vs. 94 cents expected
• Revenue: $2.59 billion vs. $2.58 billion expected

The cybersecurity company forecasted lackluster earnings for the fiscal third quarter in the range of 78 cents and 80 cents, falling short of an estimate of 92 cents from LSEG.

Revenue is expected to hit $2.94 billion to $2.95 billion, topping a $2.60 billion estimate.

Revenue grew 15% from $2.3 billion a year ago, the company said. Net income totaled $432 million, or 61 cents per share, up from $267 million, or 38 cents per share a year ago.

Palo Alto also said on Tuesday that it’s buying Israeli cybersecurity startup Koi to secure AI agents as rising artificial intelligence innovation fuels more sophisticated cyberattacks. The company has bet big on AI tools, and recently launched AI agents to help customers automate certain security responses.

The company is also in the midst of a significant spending spree as CEO Nikesh Arora transforms Palo Alto into a hub for all things cybersecurity. Since joining the company in 2018, he’s overseen more than 20 acquisitions.

Earlier this month, the Santa Clara, California-based company closed its biggest acquisition ever, paying $25 billion for Israeli identity security company CyberArk. In January, it closed the more than $3 billion purchase of cloud observability platform Chronosphere.

“We saw continued strength in platformizations, a trend that is accelerating due to AI – customers are keen to both modernize and normalize their cybersecurity stack, aligning them to our approach,” Arora wrote in a release.

Remaining performance obligations, which track the value of contracts to be delivered to customers, totaled $16 billion and topped a StreetAccount estimate of $15.78 billion. Annual recurring revenue rose 33% to $6.33 billion.

Palo Alto shares have slumped 11% year to date.

Cryptocurrency payments to suspected human trafficking syndicates surged 85% in 2025, with hundreds of millions of transactions traced on public blockchains, according to a new report by Chainalysis.

The U.S.-based blockchain analytics firm said most of the activity was linked to an expanding criminal ecosystem in Southeast Asia, where scam compounds, illegal online gambling operations and Chinese-language money laundering networks operate in unison. 

Chainalysis said in its report that crypto activity by human traffickers largely fell into three categories: International escort and prostitution services; labor placement agents and scam compounds; and child sexual abuse material (CSAM) vendors.

While data on the blockchain shows most services were concentrated in Southeast Asia, customers sent payments from across North and South America, Europe and Australia, highlighting the global reach of the operations.

The report also found that cybercriminals are increasingly relying on messaging platforms such as Telegram to advertise their services, recruit victims, and coordinate payments. 

“There’s a broader migration from older darknet forums into messaging apps and semi‑open Telegram ecosystems, which, combined with crypto, let these networks scale faster, run ‘customer services,’ and move money globally with much less friction,” Chainalysis intelligence analyst Tom McLouth told CNBC.

However, Chainalysis adds that the transparency of public blockchains also provides “unprecedented visibility” into criminal financial flows, which watchdogs and authorities rely on to disrupt activities. 

“The key takeaway is that the true financial scale is large, at least hundreds of millions of USD worth of crypto transactions, and the physical harm is orders of magnitude greater than any dollar figure,” said McLouth. 

These laundering networks operate primarily through Chinese-language Telegram channels, which can help cybercriminals “clean” illicit funds by moving them through cryptocurrency. Chainalysis estimates that those services funneled at least $16.1 billion in illicit funds in 2025.

Data showed that crypto-linked international escort services also accounted for a significant share of higher-value transfers tracked by Chainalysis, with nearly half of transactions exceeding $10,000.

Listings reviewed by researchers advertised cross-border travel packages, multi-day “companionship” services and tiered pricing structures, with VIP packages priced above…

Chinese-language money laundering networks funneled an estimated $16.1 billion in illicit funds through cryptocurrency transactions in 2025, according to a report released Tuesday by blockchain data analysis firm Chainalysis.

These networks, known as CLMNs, accounted for roughly one-fifth of the illicit cryptocurrency ecosystem in 2025, which Chainalysis valued at over $82 billion.

The criminal networks primarily operate through various channels and chat groups on the messaging platform Telegram, where launderers advertise their services to prospective customers. These postings often include pictures showing heaps of cash and public testimonials as proof of liquidity and service quality, according to the report.

These Telegram-based channels, known as “guarantee” platforms, function as marketing hubs or informal escrow services that connect vendors with prospective clients. While the platforms do not control the underlying transactions, Chainalysis said they are the main conduits through which illicit deals are arranged.

Beyond money laundering, activity on these platforms includes other forms of criminal trade, such as human trafficking and the sale of Starlink dishes used in Southeast Asian scam centers, according to Andrew Fierman, Head of National Security Intelligence at Chainalysis.

Prospective clients also range from organized crime syndicates to sanctioned state actors, Fierman said.

“We have seen everything from North Korean money and DPRK-related hacks going through, to a whole host of other illicit activity,” Fierman told CNBC.

Such Telegram-based platforms are common mediums for illicit networks worldwide, according to Mark Button, a criminology professor at the University of Portsmouth, who has studied similar networks in India and West Africa.

The report identified six main techniques used by Chinese-language money laundering networks to launder funds, often relying on digital assets such as cryptocurrencies to move funds discreetly.

According to Fierman, cryptocurrencies appeal to criminal actors because of their liquidity, ease and relative anonymity, particularly for those seeking to avoid having their funds frozen on traditional financial platforms.

Stablecoins such as USDT, issued by Tether, and Circle’s USDC, are cryptocurrencies designed to maintain a stable value relative to a specified asset, often a fiat currency like the U.S. Dollar. Their lower volatility compared with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum helps keep transaction costs down.

“If you are involved in illicit activity, the last thing you want to be doing is losing more money,” Fierman said….

Palo Alto Networks beat Wall Street’s fiscal first-quarter estimates after the bell on Wednesday and announced plans to buy cloud observability platform Chronosphere for $3.35 billion.

The stock fell about 3%.

Here’s how the company did versus LSEG estimates:

• Earnings per share: 93 cents adjusted vs. 89 cents expected
• Revenue: $2.47 billion vs. $2.46 billion expected

Revenues grew 16% from $2.1 billion a year ago. Net income fell to $334 million, or 47 cents per share, from $351 million, or 49 cents per share in the year-ago period.

Palo Alto’s Chronosphere deal is slated to close in the second half of its fiscal 2026. The cybersecurity provider is also in the process of buying Israeli identity security firm CyberArk for $25 billion under CEO Nikesh Arora‘s acquisition spree.

He told investors in an earnings call that Palo Alto is making this simultaneous acquisition to address the fast-moving AI cycle.

“This large surge towards building AI compute is causing a lot of the AI players to think about newer models for software stacks and infrastructure stacks in the future,” he said.

Palo Alto guided for revenues between $2.57 billion and $2.59 billion in the second quarter, the midpoint of which was in line with a $2.58 billion estimate. For the full year, the company expects $10.50 billion to $10.54 billion, versus a $10.51 billion estimate.

Capital expenditures during the period were much higher than expectations at $84 million. StreetAccount expected $58.1 million. Remaining purchase obligations, which tracks backlog, grew to $15.5 billion and topped a $15.43 billion estimate.

The rise of artificial intelligence has also stirred up increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks and contributed to tools for customers. The Santa Clara, California-based company has infused AI into its tools and launched automated AI agents to help fend off attacks in October.