Betting on AI for treasury operations with Palo Alto Networks

Harnessing the Power of Technology

Highly Commended Winner

Palo Alto Networks

Photo of Ted Michaels, Concourse, Yogesh Tupe and Zaril Razak, Palo Alto Networks.

Catherine Portman

VP Treasurer

Julie Chiu

Sr. Treasury Manager

Tyler Cone

Sr. Treasury Manager

Yogesh Tupe

Assistant Treasurer

United States

Palo Alto Networks, Inc. is an American multinational cyber-security company with headquarters in Santa Clara, California. The core product is a platform that includes advanced firewalls and cloud-based offerings that extend those firewalls to cover other aspects of security.

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The challenge

Via real-time global cash visibility, centralised liquidity structures and executive-level reporting, Palo Alto Networks had access to clean, connected, available data. What they lacked was the ability to make that data truly intelligent, not just visible.

Their treasury team was spending significant time on the mechanics of assembling information rather than acting on it. The catalyst was strategic rather than reactive. Palo Alto Networks recognised that AI agents had reached a level of maturity capable of handling institutional treasury complexity at their scale.

Rather than treating AI as a reporting enhancement, as most treasury functions were doing, they saw an opportunity to adopt it as a new operating model entirely. One where agents handle the analytical heavy lifting, freeing their team to focus on strategy, portfolio optimisation and value creation.

The solution

Concourse deployed AI agents across Palo Alto Networks’ treasury operations, connecting directly into their existing data environment without requiring any system migration or infrastructure replacement.

The agents ingest live data from more than 180 bank accounts and their multibillion-dollar bond portfolio, making the entire dataset queryable in natural language at 99%+ accuracy.

The design principle was important from the outset. Palo Alto Networks was not looking to automate a single task or add a smarter dashboard. They wanted agents capable of reasoning across their full data environment and returning answers they could act on accurately, instantly, every time.

Reporting was transformed entirely. Concourse agents now handle that workflow end-to-end and automatically, so the team arrives each morning with current, structured reports already complete. Reporting moved from weekly to daily while simultaneously freeing up meaningful analyst time.

Implementation was fast. Palo Alto Networks was live with production agents within weeks of starting.

Best practice and innovation

The judges commended Palo Alto Networks for substantially reshaping liquidity management by automating and applying AI across the process – which also impacts and alters the treasury’s roles.

Palo Alto Networks’ deployment with Concourse represents a genuine inflection point in how corporate treasury can operate, and most functions have not yet crossed it. What Concourse enables is the ability to query a full financial position the way you query a search engine, in plain language, instantly, with answers that can be trusted for real decisions.

Across more than 180 bank accounts and a multibillion‑dollar bond portfolio, Concourse agents return accurate answers to complex, multi-variable questions at 99%+ accuracy. This is not summarisation. It is reasoning over live data, and the difference is significant. Summarisation tells you what happened. Reasoning helps you decide what to do next.

What makes this model genuinely future-proof is its extensibility. Traditional treasury software is defined by its features at go-live. Agents are different: their capabilities expand continuously as new workflows are trained and built. Palo Alto Networks can add a new use case in days.

Key benefits

Cost savings.
Process efficiencies.
Return on investment (ROI).
Risk mitigation.
Exceptional implementation (budget/time).
Future-proof solution.
Improved key performance indicators (KPIs) or metrics.
Improved visibility.
Increased automation.
Manual intervention reduced.
Reduction in errors.

Reporting cadence moved from weekly to daily. Agents run the full workflow automatically, from data ingestion to formatted output, delivering structured reports each morning without manual intervention.

The analyst time recovered has been redirected entirely into strategic work: portfolio analysis, yield optimisation and decision support for senior leadership. The strategic capability uplift has been equally significant.

Palo Alto Networks can now model portfolio scenarios, evaluate cash optimisation opportunities, and stress-test positions across their full financial environment in real time. Questions that previously required days of analytical work are answered in a conversation.

Perhaps most importantly, this is not a completed project with a fixed endpoint. Every new agent workflow added expands what the team can do.

The decision to deploy Concourse was a deliberate bet on a new model for treasury operations. One where AI agents handle the analytical and operational workload so the treasury team can operate as a genuinely strategic function.

Matthieu Hafemeister

Co-Founder & CEO, Concourse

Congratulations to the Palo Alto Networks treasury team on this well-deserved recognition. From the start, this was a genuine partnership: their team brought deep knowledge of their specific cash operations, and together we built production-ready AI agents in Concourse that now own core treasury workflows end-to-end, with every output traceable back to source. Palo Alto Networks didn’t simply adopt AI; they reimagined their workflows around agents their team owns and runs every day. We’re proud to have deployed alongside them and excited for what comes next.

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The Adam Smith Awards are the industry benchmark for best practice and innovation in corporate treasury. The 2026 awards attracted 635 nominations. To find out more please visit treasurytoday.com/adam-smith-awards

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