Cybersecurity-related stocks rose broadly in the U.S. stock market. As the spread of artificial intelligence (AI) raises the risk of cyberattacks, comments by IBM's chief executive that companies are reviewing their security budgets lifted investor sentiment.

On July 14, local time, CNBC reported that IBM CEO Arvind Krishna (아르빈드 크리슈나) cited cybersecurity as one of corporate customers' biggest concerns in connection with preliminary second-quarter results. He said customers' information technology spending is shifting to AI infrastructure areas such as servers and memory, while their vigilance about security risks is also rising quickly.

The market reaction was immediate. Okta, Netskope and CrowdStrike each rose about 10 percent. SailPoint, Zscaler and SentinelOne each gained about 8 percent, and Palo Alto Networks jumped about 7 percent.

The rise coincided with expectations that advances in AI technology could significantly expand demand for security. As concerns grow that advanced AI models could increase the speed and sophistication of cyberattacks, companies are being seen as likely to review existing security systems and expand investment.

Krishna specifically mentioned Anthropic's high-performance AI model, "Mythos," and said corporate customers are recalculating their level of security spending. "Mythos is stopping people in their tracks," he said. "Companies are reassessing how much more they need to spend on cybersecurity," he added.

The uncertainty is also delaying contract signings in the short term. Krishna said some large deals were put on hold toward the end of the quarter, and that companies are briefly slowing new investment until they gain confidence about changes in the AI and security environment.

He drew a line at the idea that IBM's software business itself is being directly hit by AI. "I do not see our software being disrupted by AI at all," Krishna said. That was taken to mean AI is changing how companies allocate budgets and set investment priorities, rather than replacing demand for existing software.

The comments were taken as a signal of how AI adoption is reshaping the flow of corporate IT budgets. Companies are increasing the share of investment in AI infrastructure such as servers and memory, while also facing a situation where they need to expand cybersecurity spending to respond to emerging security threats.

In the market, investors see a strong possibility that, even if some contracts are delayed in the short term, the spread of AI will lead over the long term to pressure for expanded security investment. The broad jump in cybersecurity stocks on the day was interpreted as reflecting expectations about future changes in the demand environment rather than individual corporate results.