General Session: Ken Xie | Accelerate26

📅 Mar 20, 2026 Fortinet 17 MIN 29 VIEWS 12 SEGMENTS · 2 SPEAKERS

At Fortinet Accelerate 2026, Founder, Chairman, and CEO Ken Xie shares how Fortinet is leading the shift to AI-driven security through long-term investment, innovation, and platform convergence. From securing AI across every layer to enabling faster, more automated threat response, Fortinet is focused on helping organizations stay ahead of increasingly sophisticated, AI-powered attacks. • FortiOS 8.0 introduces major advancements across AI security, SASE, SD-WAN, and SecOps • Unified SASE continues to scale with strong growth and flexible deployment models • AI-powered security operations re...

Host 0:10 ↗

Please welcome Fortinet founder, chairman of the board and chief executive officer Ken Xie.

1 more exchange in this transcript

Cite this transcript

APA, MLA, BibTeX

APA

Xie, K. (2026, March 20). General Session: Ken Xie | Accelerate26 [Interview transcript]. Fortinet. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/772994/

MLA

Ken Xie. "General Session: Ken Xie | Accelerate26." Fortinet, 20 Mar. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/772994/.

BibTeX

@misc{xie2026_772994,
  author       = {Ken Xie},
  title        = {General Session: Ken Xie | Accelerate26},
  howpublished = {Interview transcript, Fortinet. CEOInterviews.AI},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = {mar},
  url          = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/772994/},
  note         = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}

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Key Quotes (2)

“So we also invest billions of dollars. So we actually the only cyber security company invest a billions dollar on AI infrastructure data center the GPU all this AI model.”

▶ 1:26 CONTROVERSIAL POLICY

“This year 2026 is the first year network security market will be bigger than the traditional networking market because the customer will benefit a lot from better security from easy to manage from low cost of total ownership and also can consolidate a lot of solution together.”

▶ 5:49 POLICY

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About Ken Xie

Ken Xie discussed Fortinet's second quarter 2026 financial results on the company's earnings call, reporting that billings grew 33% and total revenue increased 26%, with product revenue up 52% and free cash flow nearly tripling year-over-year to almost $1 billion. He attributed the results to the company's strategy, innovation, and execution, and described Fortinet's focus on network security through internal R&D and long-term investments, including its own ASIC design and global infrastructure. Xie stated that Fortinet is the only vendor to organically develop key SASE functionality into a single operating system, FortiOS, which integrates NGFW, SD-WAN, ZTNA, secure web gateway, CASB, and DLP, and he introduced the concept of a "SASE firewall" that combines secure networking and universal SASE on the same platform. Xie also commented on competitive positioning, saying Fortinet is likely the only network security vendor discussing OT security and that its ASIC design provides advantages in performance, cost, and energy consumption. He noted that FortiGate products are experiencing the strongest growth, partly because they run the same FortiOS for both traditional firewall and SD-WAN/SASE functions, which can make categorization difficult. He expressed belief that the SASE firewall represents a significant opportunity for accelerated growth in areas like SASE, AI, and quantum, similar to how next-generation firewalls replaced traditional network firewalls two decades ago.

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