Chronosphere, Inc. A Palo Alto Networks Company

01 / WHAT IT BUILT

What the company did

Chronosphere was a cloud-native observability platform founded in 2019 by former Microsoft and Uber engineers Martin Mao and Rob Skillington. Built purpose-built for AI-era workloads, its platform ingested and analyzed vast streams of telemetry — metrics, traces and logs — while controlling cost and complexity, delivering observability at roughly one-third the cost of competing solutions. It became the observability partner for two of the world's premier large language model providers, reached over $160 million in annual recurring revenue by September 2025 with triple-digit year-over-year growth, and was recognized as a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Observability Platforms, having raised about $369 million. On November 19, 2025, Palo Alto Networks announced a definitive agreement to acquire Chronosphere for $3.35 billion (a mix of cash and replacement equity awards) to expand cloud-native observability and connect telemetry with its Cortex agentic-remediation platform; the deal subsequently closed, and co-founder Martin Mao became Palo Alto's Senior Vice President and General Manager of Observability.

03 / EVENT HISTORY

Events in the structured record

1. 2019
   Founded

   Founded by former Microsoft and Uber engineers Martin Mao and Rob Skillington as a purpose-built observability platform for cloud-native and AI workloads.

2. 2025
   Acquired by Palo Alto Networks

   On November 19, 2025, Palo Alto Networks announced a definitive agreement to acquire Chronosphere for $3.35 billion (cash plus replacement equity awards) to expand cloud-native observability and feed real-time telemetry into its Cortex agentic-remediation workflows; Chronosphere reported over $160 million in ARR with triple-digit growth and a Leader position in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Observability Platforms. The deal subsequently closed, with co-founder Martin Mao becoming Palo Alto's SVP and GM of Observability.