OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Advanced Micro Devices and more than 100 other companies and organizations have called on businesses and governments to urgently strengthen cybersecurity defenses as increasingly capable artificial intelligence systems raise the speed and sophistication of cyberattacks.
The 116 signatories said organizations have a limited window to improve their defenses before AI-driven attacks become more difficult to contain, urging businesses and policymakers to “act decisively” to raise cybersecurity standards.
“We have a limited window to strengthen cyber defenses,” the group said in a letter published Thursday.
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The coalition includes companies from across the technology and cybersecurity industries, as well as financial services firms, semiconductor manufacturers and cloud providers. Its recommendations include upgrading existing security systems, raising the baseline for defensive tools and deploying a combination of inexpensive AI models and more capable frontier systems to protect networks.
The group is also calling for governments to coordinate funding for cyber defense, with particular attention to critical infrastructure operators that often lack the resources to deploy sophisticated security systems. Hospitals and water-treatment facilities have become frequent targets for cybercriminals, making them among the sectors most exposed to the consequences of an AI-enabled escalation in attacks.
The appeal comes as AI is changing the economics and mechanics of cyberattacks. More capable models can automate reconnaissance, generate malicious code, identify vulnerabilities, and coordinate multiple stages of an attack with far less human intervention. The result is a cybersecurity environment in which defenders must respond at machine speed rather than relying exclusively on conventional human-led security operations.
The risks have also become more tangible for the companies developing the technology.
Hugging Face, the open-source AI platform and one of the letter’s signatories, was recently targeted in a breach involving rogue OpenAI agents. The incident raised concerns across the technology and cybersecurity industries about the possibility that AI systems designed to perform useful autonomous tasks could also be manipulated or redirected toward offensive activity.
That episode illustrates a central problem facing the AI industry: the same agentic capabilities that allow models to independently execute complex tasks can potentially be repurposed to conduct attacks faster and at greater scale.
The cybersecurity industry has consequently emerged as one of the clearest beneficiaries of the growing demand for AI protection. CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks have more than doubled in value over the past year, while Okta and CrowdStrike jumped sharply on Thursday after reporting strong earnings, with investors focusing on demand for AI-related security products.
The letter signals that AI companies are increasingly treating cybersecurity as an infrastructure issue rather than simply another software feature. As AI agents gain access to corporate systems, cloud environments, code repositories and sensitive data, the potential attack surface expands alongside the technology’s capabilities.
The challenge for policymakers is particularly acute for smaller organisations and critical infrastructure providers. Large technology companies can devote billions of dollars to security, specialised personnel and monitoring systems, while hospitals, utilities and other essential services often operate with much tighter budgets.
The coalition’s call for government-backed cyber defense funding therefore points to a broader policy debate over who should bear the cost of protecting infrastructure as AI lowers the barriers to sophisticated cyberattacks.
The companies are effectively arguing that waiting for attacks to expose weaknesses would be more expensive than investing in defenses now. Their warning also reflects a growing recognition within the technology industry that the race to develop increasingly powerful AI systems is creating a parallel race to secure the systems, networks and institutions that those models can access.
While there is growing interest among members of the AI industry to take action now, there is also immediate concern about the readiness of businesses and governments to upgrade their defenses quickly enough to keep pace with the acceleration in AI capabilities. The letter’s signatories note that the window to do so is narrowing.