Steve Hou
Head of Research at Silicon Data, AI Compute Markets
AI models able to hack companies are super bullish for cybersecurity companies like CrowdStrike. Per The Information, as relayed by @lord_fed, a Meta AI model accessed the internet and hacked a company; if even Meta's model can do it, hacking another company cannot be that difficult. That helps explain CrowdStrike's unstoppable run. x.comÂ
CrowdStrike may distinguish itself from an expensive cybersecurity group by showing more breakneck growth at earnings next month. Fortinet's slowing product revenue exposed how much relentless execution investors had priced into the group's extreme multiples, pulling CrowdStrike down in sympathy. CrowdStrike remains in a higher tier than Fortinet, which itself ranks above SentinelOne. x.com x.comÂ
CrowdStrike's re-rating reflects a massively expanded market in which security seats are defined by AI agents rather than employees. The Mythos model announcement and a frontier model going rogue with cyber attacks changed the fundamentals since the stock was at $100. It is very expensive versus its history and peers, and @InvestingVisual notes it trades at 109x forward free cash flow, but that does not mean nothing has changed. x.comÂ
Cloudflare has three AI-driven trends working in its favor. AI will uncover more vulnerabilities; protection against more AI bots, agents and crawlers is needed; and its developer platform, including Workers, is becoming the default for agent-related development. CrowdStrike is not a favorite. x.comÂ
US pressure on AI firms to improve detection puts cybersecurity, including CrowdStrike, in focus. An official said the US has made that demand clear. x.comÂ
OneSpan's subscription and recurring-revenue growth add operating evidence for its place among the identity-security picks. Revenue beat expectations at $63.9M, and full-year revenue, ARR and adjusted EBITDA guidance rose. Mitek and Clear Secure also look attractive. Financial institutions in Korea and India reported breaches; CrowdStrike says the Korean attacker used an AI penetration-testing tool. Binance had not confirmed the suspected hot-wallet hack. x.com x.comÂ
CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks are at all-time highs despite no real signs that AI is boosting cybersecurity, while Zscaler tumbled as mixed guidance overshadowed strong Q3 results. x.comÂ
CrowdStrike's selloff after Anthropic rolled out a new safety feature was an overreaction, which was obvious to anyone who read Anthropic's release and knew CrowdStrike. x.com x.comÂ
CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks should be enormous winners as agentic AI makes cybersecurity every enterprise's top priority, even ahead of AI investment. Threats from rogue internal agents and adversaries mean firms will rush to upgrade security, move to best-of-breed vendors and sharply raise budgets. Expected acceleration at leaders like CrowdStrike over the next 2-6 quarters looks far too low. CrowdStrike is the most advanced; Palo Alto is also favored, though some easy money is made. … Show more
Anthropic and OpenAI's inevitable move into cybersecurity threatens CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks' valuations. They look like the market's biggest bubble stocks right now; CrowdStrike trades at 40x ARR despite 25% growth and negative GAAP EBIT. x.com x.comÂ
CrowdStrike is where the AI buildout ends, because rising AI demand expands the addressable market for security. Management said that since Anthropic's Mythos, growth has shown up in ARR, not just meetings or interest, and the threat landscape is not subsiding. The stock's move higher is a rerating: CrowdStrike can grow faster as it gets bigger, with no end in sight in an AI world, though the share price could wobble. x.com x.comÂ
