About Jagtar Chaudhry
Jay Chaudhry, co-founder and CEO of Zscaler, has been discussing the cybersecurity implications of artificial intelligence, particularly the rise of AI agents and the impact of Anthropic's Mythos vulnerability-finding model. He described AI as a "giga wave" and argued that traditional security models based on firewalls and VPNs are outdated, advocating instead for a zero-trust architecture in which applications are hidden behind an exchange. Chaudhry stated that AI agents, which he said could number between 50 and 100 per user, represent a new security risk because they "act in milliseconds" and "take no break, no weekends, no sleep." He characterized Mythos as "powerful" but suggested its launch involved "a little bit of marketing mystique," and said that while it finds vulnerabilities at a record pace, the greater challenge is that organizations cannot patch all of them.
On Zscaler's financial performance, Chaudhry noted that the company reported 25% revenue growth in its third fiscal quarter of 2026 and crossed $3.5 billion in market capitalization. He attributed a subsequent 28% stock decline to a "misunderstood" comment about new customer acquisition, and said the company expects total ARR and revenue growth of 16 to 17% for fiscal 2027. Chaudhry also announced the intent to acquire Symmetry Systems, a company that provides an access graph mapping identity and data connections, and said Zscaler is partnering with Microsoft, Google, and AWS for agent identity rather than building its own solution. He described AI and frontier models like Mythos as "one of the strongest tailwinds our business has ever seen."
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Jagtar Chaudhry's recent appearances.
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✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Interviewer0:00
Earlier this week, cloud security firm Zscaler announced earnings and reported revenue of $230.5 million. For the bottom line, adjusted earnings per share of 14 cents. So let's bring in Jay Chaudhry, Zscaler CEO and founder of the company. Jay, thanks so much for hopping on the show today. Obviously, when it comes to cloud security, there's a need for it, and we can see that just based off of your stock, which has been up 60% year to date. And I guess my first question is, when you interact with the many CIOs, the CISOs that you engage with that are your clients in many cases, what are they looking for here as we kind of think about the cyber ransomware risk that could be coming down the pike?
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Jagtar Chaudhry0:39
CIOs and CISOs, Brian, have been spending tons and tons of money on security, but they're finding that the results aren't that good. I think they're finally realizing that the old architecture based on firewalls and VPNs no longer works in the world of cloud. So they're all looking for and embracing zero trust architecture, which we pioneered, which we built. And we are securing 35% of Fortune 500 companies, and there's a lot of interest in it. That's what's driving our growth. I'm very proud of 71% year-over-year billings growth and 62% revenue growth.
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Interviewer1:19
Jay, you mentioned on the earnings call that you're seeing the security market rapidly changing. What are some of those changes?
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Jagtar Chaudhry1:27
The biggest changes: the old architecture where everything is in my data center, my employees are sitting in the office, so I'm protecting my trusted network, is no longer good. If your applications are in the cloud, your users are working from wherever, the new architecture is needed. You know, every 20 to 30 years the architecture fundamentally changes. This is no longer incremental changes that we keep on improving the old architecture; we have this new one. It's like moving away from traditional cars to electric vehicles like Tesla. I think there's a bunch of inertia out there. We are out there evangelizing, educating the market, and COVID has shown and proven that people can actually work from where they want to. And that's what's driving now a move towards zero trust architecture, which Zscaler pioneered when I started this company in 2008. We're seeing great momentum, and we are very pleased and gratified to help our customers during these crazy times when the bad guys are trying to take advantage of it. And that's why you see all these ransomware attacks coming from left and right.
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Interviewer2:45
And Jay, as you know, it is Jobs Day in America, and we talked at length last time with you about what you're doing on the hiring front. Clearly, you've done a lot of correct hiring just given where your financials have come and where they may be going next year. As a founder, what do you ask potential hires and what do you think other companies should be asking potential hires in this type of a really crazy environment?
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Jagtar Chaudhry3:09
You know, it is very gratifying. I came to this country as an immigrant. As I graduated from college, I was ready to take any job. Today, it's so satisfying to be able to create 4,000 plus jobs at Zscaler. So we look for people who have the passion and desire in cyber security. Passion matters. So we are hiring from various areas and people who have desire to learn, because security keeps on changing all the time. And that's why we hire a number of people from colleges who actually come out with new skills, are willing to learn and make a difference. And also with COVID, the world has opened up. We are able to hire in any part of the world and in any part of the country. So we have opened up hiring in East Coast, in Canada, in Europe, and everywhere else. It is extremely important for us to have the right fire, and that's what's helping us deliver great results.
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Interviewer4:13
And Jay, Julie here. The people that you're hiring, do they have any interest in coming into an office, or are they perfectly happy to remain working at home? And I wonder also if you're starting to see any talk amongst your employees about the Omicron variant and whether that's affecting whether they want to come in.
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Jagtar Chaudhry4:32
The view about coming to the office and not coming to the office is mixed. People do like a hybrid environment. For a company like Zscaler, you don't really need to come to the office to do your core job. But I think people like to come to the office to collaborate, stand behind in front of the whiteboard, come up with new ideas. Just like you're seeing in this video, that's a typical screenshot from Zscaler office. So we see a hybrid world where people have options and choices, but there'll be some collaboration sessions from time to time. There is concern about the new variant. I think we need to make sure the health and safety of our employees is most important. So for travel, for example, we are pretty flexible. Our job doesn't require to be in front of the customer. So we are actually happy that our technology is giving other organizations the same choice. Some of the biggest companies out there, whether it's Siemens or Target or Fannie Mae or Unilever, they actually have been using Zscaler technology so their employees can work from anywhere safely.
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Interviewer5:48
Jay Chaudhry, Zscaler CEO, thanks for stopping by Yahoo Finance this morning.
