Shares of cybersecurity companies
including CrowdStrike and Datadog slumped on
Monday, as investors weighed the potential impact of artificial
intelligence startup Anthropic’s new security tool on the
industry.
Anthropic’s new feature, Claude Code Security, is designed
to detect high-severity vulnerabilities in open-source software
repositories and offer patches to fix bugs.
Shares of CrowdStrike, Datadog and Zscaler fell
around 11%, while those of Fortinet and Okta
were down roughly 6%. Palo Alto Networks dropped 3% and
SentinelOne was down by 5%.
Software stocks have been battered in recent months by
market fears around the growing capabilities of AI tools,
particularly following the launch of plug-ins from Anthropic’s
large language model Claude, seen as the startup’s push to
become an application layer.
“What you’re seeing today is really the continuation of a
panic-driven, narrative-led selloff,” said Shrenik Kothari,
director, security and infrastructure analyst at Robert W.
Baird.
Claude Code Security does not handle real-time security
tasks such as detecting live intrusions, stopping attacks in
progress or managing compiled software components in production,
which are capabilities provided by other specialized security
platforms, said Kothari.
Some analysts have said the selloff is an overreaction,
fueled by an overly simplistic narrative that AI would negate
the need for existing cybersecurity solutions.
Separately, AI chip designer Nvidia said on Monday
it has teamed up with Akamai, Forescout, Palo Alto
Networks, Xage Security and Siemens to boost real-time
cybersecurity for industrial control systems.