Accenture Buys Majority Stake in Dragos in $4.2B Deal

Crucial Infrastructure Safety
,
Endpoint Safety
,
Governance & Danger Administration

Deal Combines Dragos OT Menace Detection With runZero, NetRise

Jennifer Lawinski •
June 18, 2026    

Accenture has agreed to amass a majority stake in operational expertise risk detection agency Dragos, together with full possession of runZero and NetRise, the businesses introduced on Thursday. The mixed worth of the transactions nears $4.2 billion.

See Additionally: Airways and Airports: Visibility Throughout OT, IoT, and IT

Beneath the settlement, Dragos will proceed to function as an impartial firm below co-founder and CEO Robert M. Lee, and after regulatory signoff, runZero’s publicity evaluation capabilities and NetRise’s software program provide chain and firmware safety features will likely be built-in into the Dragos platform, Lee wrote in a weblog publish.

runZero CEO HD Moore, NetRise CEO Thomas Tempo, and NetRise Chief Know-how Officer and Chief Scientist Michael Scott will change into Dragos executives as soon as the transaction closes, which is anticipated in August or September 2026, pending regulatory approval.

“The subsequent part of Dragos is about assembly this market second and shutting the hole the mission requires. Dragos goes to make OT safety simpler for the specialists who’ve all the time relied on it, extra accessible to the IT professionals now within the combat, and supply on the scale and velocity required to fulfill this second,” Lee wrote.

The addition of runZero brings publicity evaluation and attack-surface intelligence throughout IT, OT, web of issues and cloud environments. NetRise contributes firmware-level machine visibility and a software program supply-chain safety dataset. Lee mentioned the mixed platform will give industrial operators a single place to see what’s on their OT community, perceive what’s working on it and reply to lively threats. The deal comes on the heels of Dragos’s acquisition of Phosphorus, a linked machine discovery and remediation firm, earlier this month.

Lee informed ISMG the expanded platform may also strengthen Dragos’s incident response capabilities, giving its IR workforce a broader set of instruments to deliver into lively engagements and to deploy in buyer environments forward of an incident. Accenture’s incident response workforce beneficial properties the identical entry. The 2 corporations will function their IR companies independently, Lee mentioned, however might refer purchasers to one another for surge capability when wanted. The choice, he mentioned, rests with the shopper.

Lee mentioned the deal’s construction was central to the choice to maneuver ahead with Accenture. He wrote that Dragos’s OT-focused mission has been written into the corporate’s legally binding governing paperwork, giving it a permanence that, in his characterization, earlier investor relationships didn’t assure. Lee mentioned he’ll stay CEO, will sit on the corporate’s new board of administrators and retain what he described as extra operational autonomy than he held below Dragos’s prior possession construction.

The mixed OT cybersecurity organizations are anticipated to generate roughly $208 million in annual recurring income as of June 2026, up 53% yr over yr. Accenture mentioned the acquisitions carry robust gross margins and, whereas initially dilutive to earnings, are anticipated to change into accretive to earnings per share and free money stream over time.

“In an age when AI-driven cyberthreats and geopolitical danger are evolving at a fast tempo, our cybersecurity observe is rising by double-digits and has a robust monitor file of leveraging inorganic alternative to gasoline natural development,” mentioned Julie Candy, chair and CEO, Accenture, in an announcement. “We’re assured Dragos’ differentiated OT platform will speed up our development within the vital infrastructure and industrial operations markets.”

The corporate mentioned it already leads in OT cybersecurity providers, a promote it estimates at $7 billion, and is now transferring into OT cybersecurity software program, which it initiatives at $27 billion in 2026 and rising to just about $59 billion by 2031.

The transfer extends greater than a decade of OT-focused acquisitions by Accenture, which has grown its cybersecurity enterprise to $10 billion in fiscal yr 2025 from $700 million in 2016, a compound annual development price the corporate says is 4 occasions its general price, based on a MarketsandMarkets research commissioned by Accenture. Earlier OT acquisitions embrace Cimation in 2015, Revolutionary Safety in 2020 and, extra lately, True North Options and SYSTEMA.

Accenture mentioned Dragos will retain its vendor-neutral method and can proceed supporting clients’ multi-vendor OT environments. The corporate mentioned Dragos will work with companions throughout the expertise ecosystem, together with opponents to Accenture, and can stay impartial in its product selections.

Wall Avenue questioned the deal on Thursday. Accenture shares fell by greater than 18% Thursday afternoon after it missed Q3 steerage, lowered its outlook for the fiscal yr and introduced the $4.2 billion cybersecurity acquisition.