Mitsubishi Electric has completed its acquisition of OT and IoT cybersecurity specialist Nozomi Networks, closing a US$1 billion transaction that stands as the largest acquisition in the history of operational technology security.
The deal, first announced in September last year, sees Nozomi Networks operate independently as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Japanese industrial and technology group. Mitsubishi Electric has indicated that Nozomi will retain its vendor-agnostic technology roadmap, leadership team and global partner ecosystem, a point likely to be closely scrutinised by critical infrastructure operators and CISOs reliant on multi-vendor OT environments.
For enterprise and industrial IT leaders, the scale of the acquisition is a clear signal of how strategically important OT and cyber-physical system security has become. Once treated as a niche discipline, OT security is now firmly positioned as a board-level risk domain as industrial digitalisation, connectivity and AI adoption continue to expand attack surfaces across energy, manufacturing, utilities and transport.
Nozomi enters the transaction from a position of strength. The company recently surpassed US$100 million in annual revenue and has achieved sustained cash flow and break-even performance — a rare milestone in the OT security market. Its customer base includes many of the world’s largest industrial organisations, spanning oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, utilities and mining, sectors where operational disruption carries direct safety, financial and national security implications.
The company’s leadership has emphasised that independence remains central to its value proposition. Nozomi co-founder and chief product officer Andrea Carcano (pictured) said the acquisition enables a new phase of innovation while preserving the vendor-neutral approach that underpins customer trust. From a Chief IT perspective, that assurance matters, particularly for organisations running heterogeneous industrial environments where single-vendor lock-in can increase operational and cyber risk.
Mitsubishi Electric’s rationale for the acquisition reflects broader shifts underway in industrial cybersecurity. As a global supplier of industrial automation, energy systems and critical infrastructure technologies, the company gains deeper access to advanced OT security capabilities at a time when regulators, insurers and governments are raising expectations around resilience, incident response and risk-based security management.
Nozomi’s platform focus aligns with these pressures. The company positions its technology around comprehensive asset visibility, protection across all attack surfaces and the transition toward risk-based cyber management in operational environments. It has also been an early and consistent adopter of AI in OT security, including recent releases such as Arc, designed to safely automate threat response in industrial systems, and Vantage IQ, a private AI assistant trained on company-specific OT environments.
In 2025, Nozomi expanded its partner ecosystem and grew headcount by nearly a quarter.
As industrial organisations accelerate digital transformation and AI adoption, the transaction underscores a wider reality: OT cybersecurity is no longer an adjunct to IT security. It is becoming a foundational element of operational resilience, safety and business continuity — and one increasingly shaped by the strategic priorities of the world’s largest industrial technology companies.
