Cybersecurity stocks rally on AI spending change comments from IBM's Krishna
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- IBM CEO Arvind Krishna flagged cyber fears as a top customer priority in IBM's preliminary Q2 results, telling CNBC's Sara Eisen that "rapidly-evolving, industry-wide cybersecurity concerns" caused major deals to be put on hold late in the quarter.
- Anthropic's Mythos AI model is driving the hesitation — customers are pausing new deals and asking "wait, how much do I need to spend on cyber?" until uncertainty clears, according to Krishna.
- CrowdStrike, Okta, and Netskope each climbed roughly 10%, while SailPoint, Zscaler, and SentinelOne rose about 8% and Palo Alto Networks advanced around 7%.
- Krishna pushed back on broader AI disruption fears for IBM itself, saying customers "don't see our software being disrupted by AI at all" even as spending shifted toward servers and memory.
- The cyber-stock rally came on Tuesday after IBM released preliminary quarterly figures, with the Wall Street framing tying AI advances directly to fears of quicker, more sophisticated attacks.
Why it matters: The rally positions cybersecurity vendors as a near-term hedge against AI-enabled attacks: if Mythos-class models are spooking customers enough to freeze deals, CrowdStrike and Okta become the obvious buy. IBM also benefits regardless, as Krishna noted the same caution is driving customers toward its servers and memory business while leaving its software franchise intact.
