Fortinet was founded in 2000 by Ken Xie and Michael Xie (brothers) in Sunnyvale, California. Ken Xie had previously founded NetScreen Technologies, which Juniper Networks acquired for $4 billion. Fortinet was built on the idea that security appliances needed custom hardware (ASICs) to handle encrypted traffic at wire speed.
The company’s flagship product is the FortiGate firewall, powered by FortiOS and custom Security Processing Units (SPUs) designed in-house. These purpose-built chips give Fortinet a performance and cost advantage — its firewalls can handle significantly more throughput than competitors running on generic hardware.
Fortinet went public on Nasdaq in 2009 and has been consistently profitable. Annual revenue exceeded $5.3 billion in 2023, with billings north of $6 billion. The company serves over 680,000 customers, more than any other firewall vendor.
The Fortinet Security Fabric ties together the company’s products — firewalls, switches, access points, endpoint protection, email security, SIEM, SD-WAN, and more — into a unified security architecture. FortiGuard Labs, the company’s threat intelligence division, processes over 100 billion security events daily.
Fortinet has been especially successful in the mid-market and with distributed enterprises like retail chains, where hundreds or thousands of branch offices need consistent security. Its SD-WAN solution, built into FortiGate, has captured significant market share.
Headquartered in Sunnyvale, Fortinet employs over 13,000 people globally. The company’s market cap hovers around $55-65 billion, and it remains one of the most profitable pure-play cybersecurity firms.
