Cybersecurity paid for tech's week. The AI funds did not
First Trust's Nasdaq cybersecurity fund CIBR returned 5.8% through Friday, September 18; the $122 billion Technology Select Sector SPDR XLK gained 1.0%.
Anthropic's Dario Amodei and OpenAI's Sam Altman said frontier AI should slow. On Monday, September 14, that landed on chip stocks. It also landed on cybersecurity stocks, in the other direction. By Friday the split was the week: First Trust's Nasdaq cybersecurity fund CIBR returned 5.8%, Amplify's smaller cybersecurity fund HACK gained 8.0%, and the $122 billion U.S. technology sector fund XLK was up 1.0%. The funds built around artificial intelligence were barely changed.
Monday made CIBR's week. SOXX needed four more days
- CIBR · 99.87
- XLK · 189.6
- SOXX · 533.07
Sara Araghi, a Franklin Templeton portfolio manager, said Friday that heightened AI-safety concerns could boost demand for cybersecurity, and that calls to pace frontier development are unlikely to slow infrastructure spending.
Chip funds spent four sessions getting Monday back.
CrowdStrike, Palo Alto and Zscaler
The week's return lived in one sleeve of software, not in the AI complex that has defined the sector.
Zscaler jumped 20% to $197.31. CrowdStrike rose 15% to $237.65. Palo Alto Networks gained 10% to $363.58. Fortinet added 8.8%. Those four names produced 3.87 percentage points of CIBR's week. In IGV, CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, Palantir and Fortinet produced more than the entire 2.8% gain.
Broad tech needed the same bid, plus one chip stock that is not Nvidia. Advanced Micro Devices, CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks contributed 0.82 percentage points of XLK's 1.03% weekly rise. AMD, a 4.5% sleeve, climbed 8.5%. Nvidia, the 14.2% weight that is supposed to be the AI trade, rose 1.8%. Microsoft, the 9.9% weight, slipped 0.4%. Broadcom fell 1.2%. Invesco's equal-weight S&P 500 technology fund RSPT was unchanged, a reminder that this 1% was a few names.
Salesforce and Intuit still paid last week's price
Software funds fell 2.9% last week as application names were marked down. Security reversed that. Applications did not. Salesforce fell 3.8%, Intuit dropped another 5.7%, and Oracle slipped 1.8%. IGV is still 1.2% below where 2026 started and 12% below its 52-week high.
That is the software market as two books.
Fortinet and CrowdStrike doubled. Intuit lost more than half
- +114%
- +103%
- +97%
- −9.6%
- −12%
- −54%
The AI-safety comments did not re-rate the sector. They re-rated the vendors that sell the locks. CrowdStrike and Fortinet had already doubled and still got paid. Zscaler, climbing out of a 41% hole from its high, was the exception.
Nvidia is up 19% in 2026. Microsoft is up 2.7% and sits 11% below its 52-week high. iShares' Future AI & Tech fund ARTY, up 58% this year, added 0.6% on the week. The platforms that train the models, and the funds that package them, were not the trade.
Bernstein's $351 on Palo Alto Networks
The enthusiasm had a date stamp. On Thursday, September 17, Bernstein's Peter Weed cut Palo Alto Networks to market perform from outperform and raised the price target to $351 from $253, a number that still sat below Friday's close. He made the same cut on Okta and SentinelOne. He kept outperform on Zscaler and lifted that target to $298 from $224.
The cut and the raise are the same call. Weed wrote that he had previously found the downgraded names "too cheap" and that they now seem "fairly valued." He raised Palo Alto's target and still took the rating off, because the stock had already run through the new number. The "structural AI-driven demand story for cybersecurity remains intact," he said; the stock now offered only "limited near-term upside." Zscaler was the leftover in his coverage: the one name that had missed the doubling, and the one he still rated outperform. Palo Alto Networks fell 3.1% on Friday.
SOXX is still 19% below its 52-week high after a 77% year. CIBR is 2.9% off its high after a 5.8% week. Chip funds have already paid a drawdown from the peak. Cybersecurity funds are sitting on the highs that Bernstein just declined to chase.
Friday's prices treat a safety warning as a reason to pay the lock vendors, not as a reason to cut the AI complex. They do not require Microsoft or Nvidia to participate, and they do not give Salesforce or Intuit the bid back. Zscaler at $197.31 against Bernstein's $298 target is the leftover still on the table. Palo Alto Networks at $363.58 against a $351 target is the leftover that is not.
Frequently asked
Why did cybersecurity stocks rally on AI-safety comments?
Prices treated warnings about frontier AI as a reason to pay the vendors that sell the locks, and a Franklin Templeton portfolio manager said heightened AI-safety concerns could boost cybersecurity demand without slowing infrastructure spending.
Which stocks did the work?
Zscaler, CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks and Fortinet produced 3.87 percentage points of CIBR's week, and AMD, CrowdStrike and Palo Alto carried most of XLK's 1%.
Did the AI funds benefit?
No: Global X's AI fund added 0.2% and iShares' Future AI & Tech fund 0.6%, with Nvidia up 1.8% and Microsoft down slightly.
What did Bernstein say about Palo Alto Networks?
Bernstein's Peter Weed cut it to market perform while raising the target to $351, a number below Friday's close, and kept outperform on Zscaler with a $298 target.