Cybersecurity stocks get a jolt on gloomy AI warnings from CEOs of Anthropic and OpenAI

One sector poised to capitalize on rising concerns about AI safety looks to be cybersecurity stocks.

Shares of top cybersecurity names popped in premarket trading amid fresh warnings from the biggest names in AI within the past two days. Okta ( OKTA ) shares gained 5%, CrowdStrike ( CRWD ) advanced 4.5%, and Palo Alto Networks ( PANW ) increased 4.5%.

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

The positive action stands in stark contrast to pullbacks across the AI complex today .

Within the course of two days, AI titans at Anthropic ( ANTH.PVT ), CEO Dario Amodei, and OpenAI ( OPAI.PVT ), CEO Sam Altman, have managed to scare the hell out of the human race with the powerful technology they created and pushed their teams full of pioneering super-coders 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 Saturday. "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 early on today.

"There are two ways AI progress could go very badly, and that we must avoid. First, we could lose control of the future to AI. This is unacceptable; we are unapologetically on Team Humanity, and AI must always serve people. To ensure that, we need ways to ensure that alignment and safety techniques stay ahead of progress in model capabilities," Altman said in an X post around 12:57 am ET.

He continued, "Second, we could end up in a world with too much concentration of power. If an extraordinarily powerful AI is used by one person or company to impress their worldview onto everyone else, the results could be extremely dystopian. Avoiding these two threats requires walking a narrow middle path; for example, one country could gain too much power. Another example is one lab ending up with too much power."

"The challenge that you have with some of these AI agents, it's like giving full access to a drunken intern. I mean, who knows what they're going to do?" CrowdStrike founder and CEO George Kurtz said on the Power Players With Brian Sozzi podcast earlier this year.