A CrowdStrike threat report says attacks by AI-powered hackers jumped 89% last year, pushing buyers toward single connected platforms rather than many separate tools. Even so, CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks are each down more than 13% from their record highs in early October, and Okta fell more than 7% this week after a report that OpenAI may buy a cybersecurity startup. The article attributes the selloff to valuation rather than lost customers or revenue, as many of these stocks trade above 100 times earnings after gaining over 100% in 2026. It separates platform players like CrowdStrike (Falcon Flex contracted value above $2 billion) and Palo Alto Networks (about 220 platformization deals in a recent quarter) from point solutions such as Okta, which mainly verifies logins, while noting SentinelOne, Cloudflare and Zscaler are harder to classify.
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