Citrini Research, the market research firm that went viral for its futuristic AI doomsday scenario earlier this year, sees the rise of agentic threats boosting demand for cybersecurity
In a note published on Friday, Citrini shared its bullish thesis on the sector, noting that the rapid rise of AI capabilities means companies have a greater need than ever to bolster cyber defense
“It’s clear that there are enormous opportunities for most cybersecurity companies in the AI era,” Citrini wrote. “Customers are redirecting budgets toward IT security. At the same time, we’ve seen the wholesale threat of commoditization from AI loom.”
In 2025, cybersecurity experts predicted that rising geopolitical tensions would press the US to ramp up its cybersecurity investments. Citrini said that the AI boom is already demonstrating the need for such tool, citing the recent example of OpenAI’s models going rouge to hack systems at Hugging Face
“In the near term, AI will create a cybersecurity boom as models uncover an avalanche of existing vulnerabilities, bad actors are super charged, and AI increases software creation, complexity, and attack surfaces faster than it eliminates threats,” Citrini added
The market research firm laid out the cybersecurity stocks it expects to benefit the most form this AI-driven demand surge
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Citrini previously highlighted several of these names as likely winners of the next phase of AI in an analysis last month. However, it noted that the original thesis it discussed seems to be playing out faster than initially expected
In the firm’s view, F5 hasn’t done a great job marketing itself as a dominant force in the age of AI, but it remains a top pick due its high exposure to the hardware-native security trade
For several other cybersecurity stocks on its top picks list, Citrini sees opportunity as Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) takes center stage. This security model, which assumes that every AI agent, device and user needs to be verified, has come sharply into focus since OpenAI’s Hugging Face hack, which Citrini regards as proof that further privacy controls are needed as AI agents proliferate
“By this logic, ZTNA vendors like Cloudflare, Zscaler, and Netskopeare arguably the biggest AI beneficiaries in the entire cybersecurity sector,” the firm stated. “The proliferation of agents means a higher volume of connections that require monitoring, and that plays directly to the benefit of these businesses.”
Citrini added that both Palo Alto Networks and Fortinent sit at a valuable intersection of the cybersecurity and AI trade. Not only do they stand to benefit from rising demand but they both own a type of network-enforcement infrastructure that likely won’t be replaced by AI anytime soon, protecting them from AI disruption
