Thirty years ago a handful of University of Washington students dreamed up online video games. Their company pivoted fast. Load balancing became the focus. That bet paid off in ways few could have predicted.
Today F5 marks its 30th anniversary as a publicly traded giant with more than $3 billion in annual revenue and 6,500 employees. Over 80 percent of the Fortune 500 count on the firm to keep applications running and protected. The transformation from hardware appliance maker to software-first provider of application delivery and security services mirrors the shifts in computing itself. GeekWire reported on the milestone in a recent interview with CEO François Locoh-Donou.
Locoh-Donou joined in 2017. He has steered the company through cloud adoption, the rise of multi-cloud architectures, and now the explosion of artificial intelligence. He calls the current moment “the most exciting time to be in the world of application delivery and security in probably two decades.” AI drives this acceleration. Enterprises manage their own AI workloads rather than relying solely on hyperscalers. Those workloads demand delivery and protection across hybrid environments.
But visibility fades as adoption grows. “The more an enterprise adopts AI, the less visibility it has into what AI is crawling in the organization,” Locoh-Donou told GeekWire. Agents call tools. Models pull data from scattered sources. Employees experiment with unsanctioned services. Tracking it all becomes complicated. Fast.
F5 responded with acquisitions and new platforms. In September 2025 the company completed its purchase of CalypsoAI for roughly $180 million. The deal brought offensive and defensive AI capabilities. Red teaming to uncover model vulnerabilities. Guardrails to block attacks. Enterprises run seven AI models in production on average, Locoh-Donou noted in an exclusive interview with CRN. Each carries risks that require identification and remediation.
This June F5 acquired SurePath AI. The startup specializes in network-based discovery of AI activity. No agents or application integrations needed. That technology now feeds the newly launched F5 AI Security Platform. The platform delivers continuous visibility, governance and protection for AI applications, models, agents and APIs. It works across on-prem, hybrid and public cloud deployments. Even air-gapped networks.
Security teams no longer juggle four, five or six separate tools. “Having four, five, six different tools to discover, test and secure your AI is a nightmare,” Locoh-Donou said. So F5 built one platform. Discovery through passive network tracing. Governance that sets boundaries on prompts, outputs and data access. Testing against more than 140,000 attack patterns. Runtime guardrails that achieve 98.2 percent efficacy against injection, autonomy and leakage threats.
The platform extends F5’s Application Delivery and Security Platform, known as ADSP. Customers operate applications in 19 different environments on average. Eighty-six percent run apps at the edge, in the cloud and on premises. Point solutions created complexity. Consolidation reduces it. AI makes the case stronger. Agentic systems prove hyper-distributed and dynamic. Digital sovereignty rules add further pressure, especially in Europe.
API security gains fresh attention too. AI models expose new endpoints. Zombie APIs linger unnoticed. On-prem API protection fills gaps left by cloud-only vendors. Locoh-Donou told CRN that securing all apps, APIs and AI models across any infrastructure stands as the top priority this year.
F5 itself has evolved through multiple eras. Founded in 1996 as F5 Labs, the company shipped its first BIG-IP load balancer in 1997 and went public in 1999. Early leadership focused on hardware. Under Locoh-Donou the emphasis shifted to software and SaaS. The 2019 purchase of NGINX for $670 million broadened its reach into modern application stacks. Shape Security followed in 2020 for $1 billion. Volterra, Threat Stack and others expanded multi-cloud and security capabilities.
Recent deals target AI specifically. Fletch in June 2025 brought agentic AI for threat detection. LeakSignal, MantisNet and CalypsoAI followed. Each move builds on three decades of traffic insight. F5 has observed packets since the dot-com boom. Now it analyzes tokens.
Chief Product Officer Kunal Anand captured the shift. “Most AI security today is a wrapper around a chatbot. That is not security,” he said in the company’s announcement of the AI Security Platform. Enterprises run AI inside regulated networks, behind APIs, and through autonomous agents. The new platform gives CISOs continuous control wherever those systems operate. It builds on the same foundation that has secured enterprise applications for 30 years.
Partners play a central role in the next phase. Refresh cycles for existing F5 deployments create openings. Sales teams can attach API security, AI data delivery or managed services. Locoh-Donou expects hundreds of ADSP platform customers within a year, measured by adoption of multiple services rather than single products.
Challenges remain. Competition includes legacy players such as Citrix and Radware as well as SaaS specialists like Akamai and Imperva. Some vendors focus on narrow cloud environments. F5 bets its hybrid strength and unified platform will prevail. Customers already handle massive complexity. They want fewer tools, not more.
Locoh-Donou also reflects on leadership and culture. He rejects top-down pressure. “I don’t believe much in what I call north-south pressure,” he explained. Attract talent. Build self-belief. Let internal and peer accountability drive performance. His own path informs that view. As a Black executive entering tech, he once hoped simply not to get fired. Now he speaks to students about belonging. Their voices matter even if no one in their family has worked in technology.
The company recently updated its leadership structure. In March 2026 Locoh-Donou added the chairman title. That continuity supports the current push into AI. F5 does not chase every trend. It adapts when customer needs demand change. Video games to load balancers. Hardware to software. Packets to tokens.
Analysts take notice. A recent KuppingerCole analysis framed the strategy as moving “from packets to tokens.” Success will depend on execution in runtime protection and remediation, not just detection. Early signs suggest the platform resonates with enterprises facing regulatory pressure and shadow AI risks. Eighty-eight percent of organizations report AI-related operational or security challenges.
So F5 enters its fourth decade with momentum. The core promise stays constant. Deliver applications reliably. Secure them effectively. Now that mission extends to the models and agents reshaping business. Customers already trust F5 with their most critical traffic. They increasingly trust it with their most strategic AI initiatives too.
The reinvention never really stops. But at 30, the company possesses something rare. Decades of hardened experience combined with fresh technology tailored to the latest computing wave. Enterprises need both. F5 aims to supply them.
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