“1 plus 1 equals 10 for our customers,” Armis CEO says as ServiceNow closes $7.75B deal
ServiceNow’s Pablo Stern says the acquisition strengthens security workflows, while Armis CEO Yevgeny Dibrov highlights the synergy that will benefit customers and employees alike.
ServiceNow’s $7.75 billion acquisition of Israeli cybersecurity firm Armis comes less than a month after the company raised $435 million at a $6.1 billion valuation, highlighting the speed and scale of the deal. According to executives from both companies, the transaction was driven not by timing but by years of deepening customer demand and strategic alignment.
“Security continues to grow as a priority for CEOs,” said Pablo Stern, ServiceNow’s executive vice president and general manager of its largest business portfolio, Technology Workflow Products. Speaking alongside Armis CEO Yevgeny Dibrov, Stern described the acquisition as a continuation of ServiceNow’s strategy to elevate security workflows into a core business line.
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Armis CEO Yevgeny Dibrov and ServiceNow's Pablo Stern.
(Photos: Armis, David Martinez)
Earlier this year, Stern said, ServiceNow announced that security workflows were on track to become a billion-dollar business, “basically taking it to the same level as our IT businesses, our CRM, and others.” From his perspective, the Armis deal was about accelerating that trajectory.
“For us, this really was a way of looking at, we really think of ServiceNow as being able to be a big leader in the security space,” Stern said. He pointed to ServiceNow’s recent acquisitions and investments and said Armis filled a critical gap, particularly in exposure management and cyber-physical security. Partnering with Armis, he added, made it possible “to drive end-to-end outcomes… together with a leader in the security space, a leader in the OT and cyber-physical space.”
Dibrov framed the decision to sell Armis as the product of sustained customer demand and a partnership that had deepened over time. “We continue to grow super fast,” he said, noting that Armis has crossed $340 million in annual recurring revenue and supports seven of the Fortune 10. “So many customers, we’ve seen ServiceNow and the execution by ServiceNow, and our partnership also grew more and more during this journey.”
That customer pull, Dibrov said, was decisive. “We got so much great feedback from customers, so much belief in the synergies that we have together,” he said, citing asset management, OT and IoT security, and vulnerability remediation as areas where the two platforms increasingly converged.
Questions around the timing of the acquisition, coming so soon after Armis’s funding round, prompted pointed exchanges during the interview. Dibrov was explicit. “It was after we signed the round,” he said, confirming that negotiations began only once the financing had closed. “Started the conversations after the round, moved fast.”
Stern drew a distinction between long-standing strategic discussions and the formal transaction. “The conversations we’ve been having date from well before the funding round,” he said. “The negotiation, the deal, all those pieces… happened very recently, which was after the funding round.”
For Dibrov, the decision ultimately hinged less on valuation than on alignment. “One of the big values at ServiceNow is really humble and hungry,” he said. “We believe that in order to be number one and to win and be the leader… you have to be humble, work super hard, and always think about making the product better.” That cultural fit, he added, was reinforced through repeated interactions with ServiceNow’s leadership. “It was such a great chemistry synergy in so many meetings. We understood that it’s 1 plus 1 equals 10 for our customers.”
Despite joining a much larger organization, Dibrov made clear that he and Armis co-founder Nadir Izrael intend to remain deeply involved. “Nadir and I are super excited to go and build a lot together,” he said. “We are looking for the next many years that we have a great opportunity here.”
Asked whether Armis would lose its independence inside ServiceNow, Dibrov acknowledged the shift but emphasized continuity. “It will be a different organization, of course, bigger organization,” he said. “But the values align so much, and there is so much trust between the teams.”
Stern echoed that view, pointing to ServiceNow’s operating model. “We have a GM model here in the company,” he said, describing an approach that allows business units to retain autonomy while leveraging ServiceNow’s scale. The aim, he said, is “to empower everybody who’s ultimately running their businesses” while accelerating customer outcomes.
The acquisition also carries implications for Israel, where Armis employs a substantial portion of its roughly 950 employees. Stern said ServiceNow already has a presence in the country and expects that to grow. “This is definitely going to be an accelerant,” he said. “We’re going to continue to drive investment in our site in Israel.”
