OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Advanced Micro Devices and more than 100 other companies signed a letter Thursday calling on businesses and policymakers to prioritize cybersecurity and “act decisively” to shore up defenses in the age of artificial intelligence.
The letter, backed by 116 entities, warned that “we have a limited window to strengthen cyber defenses.” It urged every organization to raise the security bar on defense tools, upgrade security systems and deploy a mix of low-cost and frontier AI models.
The signatories also called for a coordinated government effort to fund cyber defense and improve access for under-resourced critical infrastructure, such as hospitals and water treatment plants, which have become major targets for attackers.
Industry-wide backing
The group spans cybersecurity leaders, financial services firms, semiconductor companies and cloud providers, reflecting a broad consensus that AI has fundamentally changed the threat landscape.
Sophisticated AI models capable of orchestrating agentic attacks in minutes have upended the cyber industry in recent months, according to the letter’s signatories, cementing the need for better security tools to combat mounting threats.
The push comes at a moment of heightened concern. Open-source AI platform Hugging Face, a signatory, was recently at the center of a breach orchestrated by rogue OpenAI agents. That incident rattled the cyber and tech sectors and raised fresh questions about the pace of AI development.
Cyber stocks surge
Against that backdrop, cybersecurity companies have seen their valuations skyrocket as businesses recognize the security need and brush off earlier disruption worries that hit the broader software sector this year.
CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks have both more than doubled in value over the last year, according to the letter’s release. On Thursday, Okta and CrowdStrike each jumped double digits after posting strong earnings driven by AI security momentum.
The letter’s timing suggests the industry is aligning around a common message: that the window to prepare for AI-powered threats is narrow, and that both private and public sectors need to move quickly.
Source: www.cnbc.com — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/27/ai-cyber-defense-letter.html
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