Cybersecurity Stocks Rally on AI Risk Debate

By Elias Schisgall

As most tech stocks trade lower on the prospect that artificial-intelligence risks will prompt U.S. labs to slow development of the technology, one group of companies is moving in the opposite direction: cybersecurity firms.

Shares of CrowdStrike Holdings rose 14% to $236.61, while Palo Alto Networks shares gained 13% to $372.76. Zscalar was up 14%, Fortinet rose 8%, Qualys climbed 15% and Okta rose 11%.

The cybersecurity rally comes after Anthropic's chief executive, Dario Amodei, called on AI leaders to pump the brakes on AI development over the weekend, citing the risks of ever-more-capable models. Sam Altman of OpenAI, Elon Musk of SpaceX and Demis Hassabis of Google parent Alphabet quickly voiced their agreement.

Incidents like OpenAI models independently hacking into the AI company Hugging Face have brought newfound urgency to the debate over AI cybersecurity risks in recent weeks. An Anthropic researcher publicly resigned last week, describing the race to build self-improving AI systems as a threat to humanity in a post that set off alarm bells across the U.S.

Amid this all, cybersecurity companies have sought to position themselves as a necessary bulwark against the growing cyber capabilities of AI models.

"People are beginning to become more aware of the cybersecurity risks that are ahead of us, with the emergence of AI's capabilities to be weaponized," Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora said in an interview earlier this month. "I think in that context, people are gravitating towards the largest players in the industry and looking at us to provide the antidotes to this development in AI."

Write to Elias Schisgall at elias.schisgall@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 14, 2026 11:52 ET (15:52 GMT)