Fortinet recently announced strong first-quarter 2026 financial results, beating the high end of guidance for billings, total revenue, operating margin, and earnings per share. We spoke with Ken Xie, Founder, Chairman of the Board, and CEO; Christiane Ohlgart, CFO; and John Whittle, COO, about the quarter’s performance, market trends driving customer demand, and Fortinet’s momentum across Secure Networking, Unified SASE, and AI-Driven Security Operations (SecOps).

Can You Give Us an Overview of Fortinet’s Q1 2026 Financial Performance?

Ken Xie: Fortinet delivered a strong first quarter, driven by broad-based demand and disciplined execution across customer segments, industry verticals, geographies, and all three of our strategic pillars. Billings grew 31% to $2.09 billion, total revenue grew 20% to $1.85 billion, and product revenue increased 41% to $645 million as customers continue to shift toward higher-performance products. The AI era is accelerating the convergence of security and networking, a strategy and innovation that Fortinet has steadfastly led for 26 years, and our financial results reflect Fortinet’s leading innovation to protect and serve enterprise customers in this environment.

Christiane Ohlgart: Our profitability and cash generation were also strong. The non-GAAP operating margin set a first-quarter record at 35.8%, while the GAAP operating margin was 31.4%. Free cash flow reached a record $1.01 billion. These results reflect the strength of our business model and our ability to deliver balanced growth, profitability, and long-term value.

What Were the Key Differentiators Behind Fortinet’s Strong Q1 Results?

Ken Xie: The convergence of networking and security continues to accelerate, especially as AI reshapes how organizations build, secure, and operate. Customers increasingly adopt our platform because our Secure Networking, Unified SASE, and AI-Driven Security Operations are built on a single operating system, FortiOS.

This matters because customers need security that is consistent across hardware, software, SaaS, cloud, and hybrid environments. They also need higher performance as AI increases traffic and the demand for segmentation and inspection. Fortinet is differentiated by our integrated platform, FortiASIC technology, FortiOS innovation, and our direct supply chain management. These advantages enable us to deliver high-performance security at a lower total cost of ownership while helping customers reduce complexity.

We also introduced new FortiGate 3500G and 400G appliances in Q1, further strengthening our leadership in Secure Networking. As customers upgrade their infrastructures for AI, OT, and distributed enterprise environments, they need security that scales without increasing operational burden. That is where Fortinet continues to stand out.

John Whittle: The quarter also underscored the strength of our operating model. AI is driving demand for large, proven cybersecurity providers capable of securing complex environments at scale, and Fortinet’s strong Q1 results demonstrate the strength of our position in this market. Customers are not simply looking for more tools. They  are seeking proven, broad, integrated solution platforms from companies with the scale, engineering depth and scale, security data at scale, and operational discipline to help secure AI-era infrastructure. Fortinet has a scale advantage to add value to customers.

Fortinet’s advantage is also rooted in how we innovate. We build and integrate key capabilities organically into FortiOS, rather than relying on loosely connected point products that must be stitched together after acquisition. That approach delivers a more unified experience for customers, for example with Fortinet’s firewall, SD-WAN and SASE solutions all well-integrated with one common operating system. This approach also gives Fortinet a durable advantage as the market moves away from fragmented, unintegrated point-solution security architectures. Over the long term, companies that can both innovate and integrate natively are better able to help customers reduce complexity, improve consistency, and respond more quickly to new security requirements.

AI is making this even more important. Organizations face faster threats, greater infrastructure demands, expanding attack surfaces, and increased pressure to consolidate vendors. Fortinet’s platform approach gives customers a practical path forward by integrating networking, security, and operations, rather than forcing teams to stitch together separate tools after the fact.

Christiane Ohlgart: From a market perspective, AI is driving durable demand for security across networking, SASE, and security operations. Customers are investing in higher-performance products to support AI infrastructure and are seeking platforms that reduce operational complexity as their environments become more distributed.

Fortinet’s role in this market is also strengthened by our active collaboration with leading AI organizations and industry initiatives. Our participation in Project Glasswing and the OpenAI cyber testing program reflects our commitment to advancing practical, security-focused AI development. These efforts provide us with valuable insight into how AI capabilities are evolving, how they may affect cyber risk, and how security providers can help customers adopt AI more safely.

We are seeing these trends reinforced by other long-term drivers, including vendor consolidation, technology upgrade cycles, IT and OT convergence, cloud adoption, data sovereignty requirements, and the need to protect critical infrastructure. These are not short-term dynamics. They support sustained platform adoption.

What Customer Wins from Last Quarter Best Demonstrate Fortinet’s Momentum?

Christiane Ohlgart: Several seven-figure wins in Q1 demonstrate how customers are using Fortinet to secure complex, high-performance, and distributed environments.

In an AI-related deal, Fortinet was selected for the initial phase of an AI data center project in the Middle East by a leading generative AI company. The customer needed a security architecture that could support significant scale, performance, and flexibility. Fortinet’s ability to standardize protection across AI data center environments was a key factor in the decision.

We also saw strong momentum in OT and distributed infrastructure. A multinational energy company selected Fortinet to standardize and secure its network with our full SD-Branch solution across more than 3,000 locations and to provide OT security for an additional 300 global sites. The customer is also exploring an expansion into FortiSASE, underscoring the opportunity to extend secure access across the enterprise.

Finally, a global manufacturer selected FortiSASE to secure approximately 40,000 users as part of a strategic initiative to modernize remote access. The customer chose Fortinet for our lower total cost of ownership, ongoing feature development, and the unified FortiOS platform, which ensures consistent security policies across FortiSASE and FortiGates.

John Whittle: These wins show why customers trust Fortinet. They are not just buying individual products. They are standardizing on a platform that supports multiple use cases over time. That includes securing AI infrastructure, extending OT protection, simplifying branch environments, modernizing remote access, and reducing the cost and complexity of managing too many disconnected tools. Operationally, our customers are looking to quickly realize the benefits of AI, in a safe and secure way, and we help them do that.

What Gives Fortinet Confidence in Its Continued Momentum through the Rest of the Year?

Ken Xie: Our confidence stems from the strength of our platform strategy and the durability of the demand drivers we are seeing. Fortinet’s advantage is built on innovation, integration, and continuous improvement.

We continue to invest across Secure Networking, Unified SASE, AI-Driven Security Operations, quantum security, AI security, and other critical areas. Integration is equally important. FortiOS 8.0 adds many new functions that further strengthen our platform. Our FortiASIC technology and owned cloud infrastructure drive performance improvements, lower the total cost of ownership, and reduce energy usage compared with many alternatives.

Customers are increasingly choosing integrated security over complexity. As AI reshapes infrastructure and risk, we believe Fortinet has a strong opportunity to continue expanding its market share.

Christiane Ohlgart: Our Q1 execution supports our outlook for continued momentum. We raised full-year guidance across all top-line metrics, including billings, revenue, and service revenue. And we continue to see leading indicators supporting future services revenue, including growth in service billings, deferred revenue, and SecOps ARR, as well as accelerating product revenue.

Fortinet added more than 6,600 new organizations to the FortiOS platform in Q1, underscoring the breadth of demand across SMB, mid-market, and enterprise customers. As more organizations adopt platform-based security architectures, Fortinet is strongly positioned to support their needs while continuing to deliver disciplined growth, profitability, and long-term shareholder value.

John Whittle: The market is moving toward the model Fortinet has been building for years. Customers want fewer vendors, more consistent policy, stronger performance, and simpler operations. They also need flexibility across cloud, on-premises, OT, AI infrastructure, and sovereign environments.

That combination plays directly to Fortinet’s strengths. Our focus remains on helping customers consolidate complexity without compromising protection or performance. That’s why our platform continues to resonate and why we believe Fortinet can sustain momentum through 2026.