Netskope introduced NewEdge AI Fast Path, a new set of network optimization capabilities designed to accelerate secure access to AI applications across public cloud, private infrastructure, and emerging neo-cloud environments. The company said the offering reduces latency, lowers transport costs, and strengthens resilience for enterprises deploying AI and agentic AI workloads. AI Fast Path runs on Netskope’s carrier-grade NewEdge private cloud and integrates into the Netskope One platform for security, networking, analytics, and AI services.
The launch targets a growing performance gap in enterprise AI deployments. According to Netskope, many infrastructure and operations teams struggle to balance security inspection with the low-latency demands of generative and agentic AI. AI Fast Path aims to minimize time-to-first-token (TTFT) for conversational AI, accelerate multi-step agentic workflows, improve large language model (LLM) access to distributed data sources, and optimize Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) traffic flows between models and external datasets.
Netskope said AI Fast Path leverages its NewEdge Route Control technology, which uses telemetry-driven path selection and makes tens of thousands of route adjustments per day to steer traffic toward optimal AI destinations. The NewEdge network spans more than 120 data centers across 75 regions and maintains over 11,000 network adjacencies to more than 750 autonomous system numbers (ASNs), including major AI infrastructure providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI.
- Introduces AI Fast Path within the NewEdge private cloud
- Targets lower latency and reduced TTFT for conversational AI
- Optimizes multi-step agentic AI workflows
- Enhances LLM performance when accessing distributed data sources
- Accelerates RAG connectivity between models and enterprise data
- Operates across 120+ data centers in 75 regions
- Maintains 11,000+ adjacencies across 750+ ASNs
- Uses telemetry-driven Route Control with continuous path optimization
“With organizations moving at AI speed, any trade-off between security and performance is unacceptable, and also unnecessary,” said Joe DePalo, Chief Platform Officer, Netskope. “Netskope is recognized as a market leader for how we combine security strengths with network performance at the level of, and in some cases even improved over, direct-to-net for virtually any user on the path. That includes optimizing the user experience for business-critical AI. We’re pleased to help customers meet their need for AI speed without adding unnecessary risks.”
🌐 Analysis: Netskope positions AI Fast Path as an evolution of its SASE and SSE architecture, aligning network optimization with AI-specific traffic patterns such as TTFT sensitivity and multi-hop RAG queries. As enterprises scale agentic AI across distributed clouds, control over peering, route selection, and edge compute capacity becomes a differentiator versus vendors that depend heavily on hyperscale infrastructure.
Competitors in the SASE and cloud security markets are also adapting to AI-driven workloads, integrating performance telemetry and direct cloud on-ramps into their platforms. Netskope’s emphasis on private backbone control and dynamic route optimization reflects broader industry efforts to reduce reliance on public internet transit as AI inference and data gravity increase across enterprise environments.
