Crowdstrike, Palo Alto Networks, and cybersecurity stocks post strong weekly gains after AI freak-out moment

A worrisome week for humanity is a cash-in week for cybersecurity investors.

Despite a slide on Friday, shares of top cybersecurity names such as Okta ( OKTA ), CrowdStrike ( CRWD ), and Palo Alto Networks ( PANW ) ripped higher this week amid fresh AI warnings from the biggest names in the space.

CrowdStrike led the way with a 15% gain since Monday, followed by SailPoint ( SAIL ), also up 15%, per Yahoo Finance AlphaSpace data. Palo Alto Networks was up 10%, while Okta tacked on 9%.

The First Trust Nasdaq Cybersecurity ETF ( CIBR ) gained 5%.

The advances likely reflect these firms seeing an even faster pace of growth as companies double down on protecting their infrastructure.

"The threat actors are also using these models. The threat actors are not pausing. They're coming after everything. They know that all this work is being done through AI, and they want to exploit it," Okta co-founder and CEO Todd McKinnon said on Yahoo Finance's Opening Bid . "I mean, the phone is ringing off the hook. And what every organization knows is that they have to keep track of all these identities."

Anthropic ( ANTH.PVT ) CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI ( OPAI.PVT ) CEO Sam Altman have managed to scare the hell out of the human race this week with the powerful technology they created and pushed their teams of pioneering supercoders to supercharge.

"Over the last few months, I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence — not just investing in risk prevention, but pacing the rate of capabilities advancement so that risk prevention has time to keep up," Amodei stated in a 3,800-word essay on Sept. 12. "We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of A.I. models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain."

Altman said right after the post that he agreed with his rival.

He then followed that up on Monday with a dark X post of his own.

Speaking at the annual Dreamforce software festival, Salesforce ( CRM ) co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff gave his bottom-line read on the debate over artificial intelligence: Leaders in AI have to step up and meet the safety moment.

"I know that we're all deeply disappointed with how the social media companies have operated over the last decade or more," Benioff said on Yahoo Finance's Opening Bid from inside Dreamforce in Salesforce's San Francisco backyard. "We know how many kids have been hurt. We've seen what has happened even to certain countries because of narratives on social media. And we cannot let AI be social media 2.0."