Zscaler CEO Jay Chaudry expects says the company's track record is 'very good' when it comes to revenue, and that Anthropic's Mythos has added 'fuel to the fire' on cybersecurity.. The security software company gave a fourth-quarter revenue forecast earlier this week that was weaker than expected. Evercore downgrades the stock, noting slowing net new customers.
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What Jagtar Chaudhry said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Jagtar Chaudhry, CEO of Zscaler, defended the company's recent stock drop, arguing the market misunderstood a CFO comment about new logo growth. He cited strong quarterly results: revenue up 25%, crossing $3.5 billion in market, and a record 23% operating margin. Chaudhry called the current cyber environment 'another COVID moment,' with Anthropic's Mythos adding 'fuel to the fire' as vulnerabilities are found at record speed, driving demand for zero trust architecture. He said preliminary FY2027 guidance is early and will be refined. On AI agent identity security, he rejected building in-house, instead partnering with Microsoft, Google, AWS, and Snowflake, positioning Zscaler as a 'Switzerland' enforcing policy. He announced a new solution launching next month at the annual user conference. He attributed the stock disconnect to traders not fully understanding the business, noting over 45% of Fortune 500 companies depend on Zscaler.
Key takeaways
Zscaler's quarterly revenue grew 25%, crossing $3.5 billion in market, with a record 23% operating margin.
Chaudhry called Anthropic's Mythos a 'COVID moment' for cyber, accelerating demand for zero trust over patching.
Zscaler will launch a new AI agent policy enforcement solution next month at its annual user conference.
Chaudhry said Zscaler will not build identity for AI agents, partnering instead with Microsoft, Google, AWS, and Snowflake.
Preliminary FY2027 guidance is early stage and will be refined closer to the fiscal year starting August 1st.
I do want to note the stock was down 28% yesterday, but it is coming back a little bit here today. It's up now about 6%. It seems like Wall Street got sort of tripped up by the feeling that new customer additions is going to be muted next year. Is that fair to say?
So Alexis, first of all, thank you for having me. If you look at the numbers we delivered, there's a very good quarter. Revenue up 25%. We crossed $3.5 billion in our market. Our operating margin is record high 23%. So I think that the market thinking that our new logo acquisition is slowing down was misunderstood. Our CFO made a comment that basically implied that we want to accelerate the growth of new logo. We are already accelerating the growth of upsell. So the comment was taken in wrong context. We are adding new logos, we're adding upsell. Our customers are doing very well. Our track record is very good.
So what kind of average revenue growth do you expect? The ARR seemed to be one of the concerns of the street. I thought 16 to 17% sounded pretty strong, but you've got 25% now. Is the forecast a little bit weaker than what we're currently seeing?
So as a CEO, I have always big aspirations. But when it comes to giving guidance, we want to be disciplined, we want to be prudent. But if you look at the track record of Zscaler, we always met or exceeded expectations on the guidance. So we're very bullish because the market opportunity is big. Cyber has never been in a stronger position from needing solutions. Point of view and from Mythos has further added fuel to the fire. I feel like this is another COVID moment in the world of cyber, because meters like mortals are finding security vulnerabilities at a record speed. The solution is not just keep on patching them. The solution is zero trust architecture that Zscaler pioneered to phase out the legacy firewalls and VPN technology. So when customers are talking to us, they're asking for more and more zero trust solutions. So we are pretty bullish about the future of the company.
But shouldn't you be? I mean, especially with the tailwind of AI, with the kind of accelerating growth that we're seeing now, I would expect your average recurring revenue expectations for 2027 to be far higher than one quarter in 2026.
So this guidance was given as preliminary guidance for the fiscal year that starts on August 1st. This is early stage. To some degree, we kept in mind that we had a couple of sales lead, a few changes that impacted the guidance we gave. But as we pass through and get ready for fiscal 27, we will be giving more refined guidance to do our market.
Jay, are there any plans to dive deeper into identity security for AI agents in your portfolio suite right now? Because it's something that our analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence sort of called out as perhaps limiting larger order closings for you.
Actually, identity plays an important role. It's a starting point. If you think about the roll out of AI agents, what's holding enterprises back is the assurance that these agents will only be able to do things that they're allowed to do. We see so many situations where agents are going rogue today. A user is the weakest link. Tomorrow, from cyber point of view, an agent will be the weakest link. And these are more dangerous because they act in milliseconds. They take no break, no weekends, no sleep. And what you really need to enforce policy is a zero trust exchange. A policy engine that says agent A can talk to agent B, agent A can talk to certain applications. We are the exchange by default. We have done it for users. We've done it for workloads. So we are best positioned. I do not think identity is the factor that's holding us back. Our view is that we should not be building identity for agents. I want to take identity from companies who help you build agents. Microsoft is a great partner for us. Google, AWS. All these parties help you build agents. We take identity from them as being the Switzerland and we connect the right party to the right party. Every enterprise is waiting for a solution like this. We'll be launching it next month at our annual user conference.
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Chaudhry, J. (2026, May 28). Zscaler CEO: Anthropic's Mythos Has Added 'Fuel to the Fire' [Interview transcript]. Bloomberg Podcasts. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/945143/
MLA
Jagtar Chaudhry. "Zscaler CEO: Anthropic's Mythos Has Added 'Fuel to the Fire'." Bloomberg Podcasts, 28 May. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/945143/.
BibTeX
@misc{chaudhry2026_945143,
author = {Jagtar Chaudhry},
title = {Zscaler CEO: Anthropic's Mythos Has Added 'Fuel to the Fire'},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Bloomberg Podcasts. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {may},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/945143/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
