{"id":31864,"date":"2026-05-08T04:12:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T04:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/31864\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T04:12:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T04:12:14","slug":"fortinets-earnings-beat-augurs-barnburner-returns-as-ai-security-threats-mount","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/31864\/","title":{"rendered":"Fortinet\u2019s Earnings Beat Augurs Barnburner Returns as AI Security Threats Mount"},"content":{"rendered":"

The HAL 9000 nightmare is manifesting as agentic ransomware<\/a> and AI models capable of sophisticated hacking.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For cybersecurity firms like Fortinet, however, that\u2019s an ideal growth market. Shares in the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company rose an eye-popping 20% Thursday, a day after executives reported<\/a> an earnings beat after the bell. Analysts say investors can expect a lot more value where that came from.<\/p>\n

Securing Growth\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fortinet makes custom chips and develops software, including firewalls, to secure networks against hackers and viruses. Demand is on the upswing because of the precipitous rise in AI-powered ransomware and malware<\/a> (for your daily dose of IRL fear, scientists say AI can now help design<\/a> actual viruses from scratch, not just computer ones).<\/p>\n

Fortinet and its competitors are also seeing a surge in demand driven by what\u2019s called Secure Access Service Edge (SASE). Basically, it\u2019s an industry term for cloud-native architecture that combines various IT security services into a single, unified cloud platform. Notably, this means security occurs at the point of connection rather than in a data center, which is useful for companies with remote workers or multiple locations.<\/p>\n

The demand growth registered broadly in the company\u2019s first-quarter results, with revenue rising 20% year over year to $1.8 billion and billings, an important investor metric that indicates future cash flow, up 31% to $2 billion. Both bested Wall Street\u2019s estimates, and had some analysts raving:<\/p>\n

BTIG analyst Gray Powell hailed the results Thursday as \u201coutstanding\u201d and underscored executives\u2019 \u201cmaterially better than expected\u201d 2026 outlook, which now calls for revenue between $7.7 and $7.9 billion, up from $7.5 to $7.7 billion.<\/p>\n

BTIG raised its recommendation on Fortinet to Buy, and its $125 price target implies shares could rise 39% above Wednesday\u2019s close. Arete Research reversed course, changing Fortinet from Sell to Buy and setting a $104 target price on the strength of cybersecurity opportunities beyond legacy technology.<\/p>\n

Thoughts for Bedtime: On the subject of AI security, researchers at Berkeley\u2019s nonprofit Palisade Research found<\/a> that recent AI systems can autonomously copy themselves across devices to prevent themselves from ever being disabled. \u201cWe\u2019re rapidly approaching the point where no one would be able to shut down a rogue AI, because it would be able to self-exfiltrate its weights and copy itself to thousands of computers around the world,\u201d Jeffrey Ladish, the group\u2019s director, told<\/a> the Guardian on Thursday. Anyway, have a nice, nightmare-free sleep tonight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The HAL 9000 nightmare is manifesting as agentic ransomware and AI models capable of sophisticated hacking.\u00a0 For cybersecurity…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,201,154,313,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-31864","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ai","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-cloud","11":"tag-cybercrime","12":"tag-cybersecurity","13":"tag-data-center"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}