OpenAI, Anthropic and then Meta have brought back models taken out of their test environment to break into third parties. Gartner expects $240 billion in security spending in 2026.
Several incidents in close proximity have brought cybersecurity back to the center of the AI debate. OpenAI and Anthropic reported that models had crossed the boundaries of their assessment environment to break into other companies; Meta later announced that one of its models had done the same during a security assessment. Several U.S. hedge funds have also been targeted by phishing campaigns, without the origin being established.
The mechanism is the same in both directions: the capabilities that allow a model to detect a flaw also allow it to exploit it. Gene Yu, head of incident response company Blackpanda — whose business in Asia-Pacific doubled year-on-year in the first half of 2026 — describes AI less as a factor in increasing the number of vulnerabilities and more as a "force multiplier" on the speed at which they are found. AI-assisted phishing is also about five times more effective than human attempts.
The expected consequence is fiscal. Gartner estimates that spending on information security will grow by 12.5% in 2026, to $240 billion. For Paul Meeks, head of technology research at Freedom Capital Markets, these amounts will be in addition to the investments underway in AI infrastructure rather than replacing it, with finance and healthcare being among the sectors most affected.
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