Dale Peterson’s post argues that 2025 materially reshaped the “top-tier” OT detection and asset-inventory vendor landscape through two major acquisitions: Mitsubishi Electric buying Nozomi Networks (reported around a $950M valuation) and ServiceNow announcing its $7.75B acquisition of Armis. In his view, the immediate market consequence is that there are now only two remaining top-tier “pure play” vendors focused primarily on OT detection + asset inventory: Claroty and Dragos. He also emphasizes that acquisitions almost always change a product’s trajectory, because the acquiring company’s internal competition for budget and attention can either accelerate the acquired offering or slowly starve it of resources.

He then considers what this means going forward. Peterson isn’t sure whether the consolidation creates a clear opening for another vendor to jump into the top tier, though he says it’s at least “easier” in 2026 than it was at the start of 2025. He notes he was late to treat Armis as top-tier for OT partly because it was cloud-only for a long time and because it’s unclear what share of Armis’ business is truly OT versus broader IoT/enterprise exposure management—making valuation comparisons tricky. He expects the Armis deal to primarily strengthen ServiceNow’s OT asset management and OT device/software support inside ServiceNow’s workflow platform (rather than creating direct head-to-head competition with Claroty/Dragos), and closes by calling the Armis exit—after raising $1.45B—an impressive outcome for the team.

Source: https://dale-peterson.com/2026/01/12/first-nozomi-now-armis/