Concerns About AI Model Capabilities Drive Down Cybersecurity Stocks

Concerns about the capabilities of an artificial intelligence (AI) model being tested by Anthropic drove down cybersecurity stocks on Friday (March 27), Bloomberg reported.

The report attributed the drop to a Fortune report that said a draft blog post that Anthropic inadvertently made publicly accessible stated that the AI model “poses unprecedented cybersecurity risks,” according to Bloomberg.

Anthropic did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

According to a Bloomberg report, Anthropic plans to share test results from its AI model, Claude Capybara, with cyber firms ahead of its release so they can improve their defenses.

Two Wall Street analysts interviewed by Bloomberg said that the market was drawing the wrong conclusion from news of the potential threat posed by the AI model. One said that if there is, in fact, a threat, there will be a greater need for cybersecurity experts.

Another Anthropic AI model was used for cyberattacks last year. Anthropic said in November 2025 that its Claude Code model was manipulated to carry out a wide-reaching cyber-espionage operation across 30 organizations in finance, technology, manufacturing, and government.

The company said the mid-September 2025 incident marked the first confirmed case in which an AI agent handled most of the steps of an intrusion normally performed by human hackers.

AI industry experts interviewed by PYMNTS at the time said the incident showed that fraudsters are evolving alongside technology, posing risks to automated systems from outside the AI systems and requiring safeguards.

The World Economic Forum’s 2025 Cybersecurity and AI report found that 70% of executives said AI has increased their exposure to digital risk, even as it improves productivity. Only 39% of firms surveyed said they have a formal framework for AI governance. The report also found that global cyber incidents have tripled since 2022.

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “COOs Leverage GenAI to Reduce Data Security Losses” found that a growing share of chief operating officers are relying on generative AI-driven solutions to improve cybersecurity management, as companies face increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks.