The AI Boom Has a Dark Side. Why Cybersecurity Stocks Might Be the Best Way to Play It.

The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has created some of the market’s biggest winners, fueling surging demand for chips, cloud infrastructure, and data centers. But the same technologies making businesses more productive are also creating a new set of risks. As companies deploy increasingly powerful AI models and autonomous agents, bad actors are gaining access to more sophisticated tools, while businesses are simultaneously creating new digital attack surfaces that need to be protected.

That darker side of the AI boom has come into sharper focus following a series of AI-related security incidents. Recent cases involving advanced AI models and autonomous agents have highlighted how quickly cyber threats are evolving, reinforcing concerns that traditional security systems may need to become far more advanced. At the same time, companies are being forced to rethink how they protect everything from identities and endpoints to cloud infrastructure, data, and AI agents themselves.