Cybersecurity stocks rally on AI spending change comments from IBM's Krishna

Okta and Crowtstrike.

Jonathan Raa | Nikolas Kokovlis | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Cybersecurity stocks jumped on Tuesday after IBM CEO Arvind Krishna flagged cyber fears as a top priority for customers in the company's preliminary second-quarter results.

During the period, Krishna said customers shifted spending to servers and memory and that "rapidly-evolving, industry-wide cybersecurity concerns" distracted customers.

The rise of advanced artificial intelligence models such as Anthropic's Mythos has spurred mass anxiety on Wall Street and worries of quicker, more sophisticated cyberattacks.

Krishna told CNBC's Sara Eisen on Tuesday that some major deals were put on hold toward the end of the quarter as businesses rethink spending.

"Mythos is making people pause to say, wait, how much do I need to spend on cyber? They're pausing on new deals until they know," Krishna told Eisen Tuesday. "We don't see our software being disrupted by AI at all."

CrowdStrike skyrocketed 12% each, while Okta and Netskope surged about 11% each. SailPoint, Zscaler, SentinelOne and Palo Alto Networks each rallied about 7%.

5-day stock chart of cybersecurity stocks: Okta, NetSkope, CorwdStrike, SailPoint, Zscaler, and SentinelOne.

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