Crowdstrike shares popped to a new all-time high on Monday to headline a broader cybersecurity stock surge as leaders in the artificial intelligence space have urged a slowdown in development of the technology amid fears it could cause human extinction.
Key Takeaways
- Crowdstrike’s stock closed up 13.8% to $235.38, marking an all-time high for the cybersecurity firm’s stock, which had struggled in the previous four days of trading.
- Crowdstrike, which offers protections against malware, ransomware and zero-day threats that autonomous AI agents can conduct or support, has rallied four months straight and doubled in stock price since mid-April.
- Fellow cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks jumped 13.1% Monday, recovering from a mostly stagnant September.
- Cloud security company Zscaler rocketed 16.5% to $191.73, reaching its highest point on the stock market since February.
Big Number
100%. That is how much Crowdstrike’s stock has grown since the start of the year, when shares were priced around $113.
Key Background
The rise in cybersecurity stock comes after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in an interview over the weekend that the AI industry “lied to people about the fact that this technology had risks” and acknowledged AI’s “real dangers.”
He in a separate blog post called for a slowdown to AI development and said he would be willing to forfeit AI “to the right combination of governments,” expressing concerns single governments “could abuse this technology just as easily as a single company could.” OpenAI chief Sam Altman and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk then publicly stated their agreement with Amodei’s warning about AI dangers.
Leaders in the AI space rushed to chime in on AI risks recently after Jacob Coxon, a former Anthropic and OpenAI researcher, announced his resignation last week and said developers making AI tools “earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.” While President Donald Trump has opposed calls to rein in AI and likened stopping a rogue version of the technology to flipping a switch, experts insist AI could gain uncontested control of infrastructure, military weapons, power grids and more, an outcome that may not become clear until it is already too late to stop it.
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