CrowdStrike and Okta stocks surge on rising AI security demand

Cybersecurity and enterprise software companies are seeing significant stock gains driven by increased spending on artificial intelligence. CrowdStrike reported its best trading day ever, with shares rising 20% after beating fiscal second-quarter estimates and raising forecasts. CEO George Kurtz described the current landscape as an “arms race,” where AI is simultaneously driving more cyberattacks and higher security expenditures.

Okta also saw a nearly 29% surge in stock price following strong quarterly results. The company reported dozens of AI-related deals in the second quarter, with new products accounting for nearly a third of total bookings.

In the broader enterprise sector, ServiceNow is gaining traction in the agentic AI market—software capable of taking actions with minimal human input. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has endorsed ServiceNow’s platform as a potential operating system for enterprise AI agents. The company reported that customer adoption of agentic AI grew ninefold over the previous nine months.