New Wall Street research touts our long-held view on AI and cybersecurity stocks

Wall Street is touting one of our long-held views: AI represents a tailwind —not a headwind — for CrowdStrike and cybersecurity stocks. Shares of CrowdStrike rose 1.6% Monday after receiving a pair of bullish analyst calls. Mizuho upgraded the stock to outperform from neutral while upping its price target to $520 from $490, saying recent channel checks showed "very healthy demand" across the platform and that CrowdStrike has "arguably the strongest set of offerings" in AI security. Separately, JPMorgan highlighted CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks as "obvious beneficiaries" of the accelerating threat landscape tied to foundation models and agentic AI. The firm said platform vendors with proprietary data and deep domain expertise are well-positioned to protect companies as AI expands the range of threats across identity and cloud environments. The Club owns CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks, but has a 3 rating for the latter, meaning we're looking to sell the stock into strength. Jim Cramer decided that we only need one cybersecurity name in the portfolio and wants to make room for another. We sold some Palo Alto shares on Monday. CrowdStrike has a 1 rating. The positive notes matter because CrowdStrike and Palo Alto have been swept up in the broader sell-off in software stocks this year amid worries that AI will steal market share. The pair makes up more than 10% of the IGV tech software ETF , which is down 20% in 2026. …