More than 100 companies including OpenAI, KPMG, Visa, Microsoft, and Citi signed an open letter Thursday warning that businesses and policymakers have “a limited window to strengthen cyber defenses” before the world’s IT systems are faced with “widespread and sophisticated” attacks enabled by artificial intelligence.

They called on every organization to “raise the security bar” and for governments to coordinate cyber defenses at the local, national and international level and provide essential services like hospitals and water utilities with access to defensive technology.

Access Denied

We’re no longer talking about a future problem. Researchers at IBM found that, from March 2025 to February 2026, 25% of data breaches involved AI-enabled attacks, a more than 50% increase from the previous 12-month period. In so many words, Thursday’s letter says if AI threats aren’t top of your bosses’ agenda, their priorities are wrong. You now have one more reason to needle them at the next all-hands meeting.

The letter advises companies to meet the threat of AI cyberattacks with “the urgency and coordination of an incident that takes precedence over everything except critical business operations.” The time to upgrade or replace security systems and add a mix of lower-cost and frontier defensive AI tools was yesterday. At least for investors, where there’s anxiety, there’s money to be made. And, as companies and governments mobilize to prevent the world from becoming a Harlan Ellison short story, cybersecurity executives are eating well:

• Shares in CrowdStrike and Okta surged 20% and 28%, respectively on Thursday, a day after both reported stellar earnings and raised their forecasts. Executives at both companies said cybersecurity spending is rising in step with artificial intelligence adoption.
• Palo Alto Networks, the world’s largest pure-play cybersecurity company, rose 12% Thursday. Shares in Palo Alto and CrowdStrike, the second largest in the sector, have both more than doubled in value in the last 12 months. Third-place Fortinet, which has also more than doubled in the last 12 months, rose 9.7% Thursday.

Cases in Point: Among the more prominent AI-enabled cyberattacks revealed this year was the breach of nine government agencies in Mexico by one single operator, a sophisticated act that researchers at Gambit Security said would normally have required a team. Earlier this week, OpenAI admitted that, when one of its AI agents broke free of controls and independently hacked the startup Hugging Face, the illicit activity went undetected for a week. After the incident, over 1,300 employees from major tech companies signed a letter in July asking the government to regulate the development of AI. Hugging Face, unsurprisingly, signed Thursday’s letter. It also agreed to be acquired for $12.9 billion by Nvidia, who presumably has a good IT guy or two.

Better late than never, right?

Data from the Transamerica Institute shows eight in 10 not-yet-retired middle-class Americans agree that today’s high cost of living is making it harder for them to save for retirement, while more than half of current retirees regret not saving sooner or enough. It’s no wonder, then, that many are seeking new potential sources of wealth creation ahead of retirement. For an increasing number of people, cryptocurrencies fit the bill.

“We’re seeing significant interest among people aged 45+ looking into crypto investments,” said Ryan Horst, CEO and co-founder of the cryptocurrency investor education service Altcoin Pro. “Many of them have significant wealth and a lot to lose, so it’s really important that they know what they’re doing.”

Financial advisors told Retirement Upside that trying to “catch up” with crypto has some merit, but most voiced significant caution about the risks involved. When evaluating the inclusion of digital assets like bitcoin in a client’s portfolio, the decision depends on the specific client, their goals and their risk tolerance. There is no perfect asset or allocation, advisors agreed, and not everyone is suited to be a crypto investor.

Crypto Cautious

“I’ve seen more clients over 45 interested in crypto, especially those who feel behind on retirement,” said Joon Um, tax advisor at Secure Tax & Accounting. “The danger is treating it as a shortcut to catch up. Crypto can offer growth, but it is highly volatile. I would keep it as a small, speculative part of a diversified retirement plan.”

Kevin Feig, founder of Walk You To Wealth and former head of risk at the crypto exchanges Coinbase and Kraken, agreed. “While there are a lot of digital assets available, most are simply noise,” he warned. “They aren’t one-size-fits-all, and most have drastically different use cases and profiles.”

Bitcoin and ether, for example, are often linked in news articles because they are the largest by market cap, but they have very different characteristics:

• Bitcoin, for example, is best explained to clients as a collectible: If there’s no demand, there’s no value.
• Ethereum, on the other hand, is essentially a tech platform that enables fast, low-cost transactions via decentralized financial systems.

“You want to understand why you are holding any digital asset and how it fits into your overall portfolio,” Feig said.

Crypto Skeptical. Not everyone is open to using crypto in retirement portfolios. Monica Dwyer at Harvest Financial Advisors thinks it’s a “very bad idea.”

“You think that if you just put your money into this risky asset that you can cross your fingers and hope that it provides you the retirement lifestyle that you dream of but haven’t been able to save for,” Dwyer said. “Don’t invest in risky assets just because you didn’t save enough yet. Buckle down, reassess your ability to spend less and save more. The real magic happens when you change your lifestyle and assess what is truly important.”

Agriculture fund investors may be making hay.

With the Strait of Hormuz still closed, the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and what forecasters are saying is likely to be the worst El Niño on record, crop supply is tighter than usual. As a result, prices are rising for agricultural funds. Because the sector is driven by crop prices, it’s uncorrelated with the rest of the market, and can act as a hedge against possible losses due to a feared artificial intelligence bubble. Investors who missed the boat on energy when the war in Iran began are turning to agriculture funds to leverage market shifts due to the conflict, said Kathy Kriskey, Invesco’s head of alternatives ETF Strategy.

Kriskey said she asked a client who bought into the Invesco DB Agriculture Fund (DBA) at the start of the war what was behind the move. His answer focused on alternative fuels (soybeans can be turned into biodiesel and corn into ethanol), plus the lack of correlation to the broader market, Kriskey said. “Then he ended with, ‘And people have to eat.’”

Reaping Before Sowing

Usually, investors allocate to agriculture funds when the underlying crop prices start moving higher, said Jake Hanley, CGO at Teucrium. This happened in 2022 when the Russia-Ukraine war sent grain prices soaring: The price moved, and inflows followed. But this year, when the US took action against Iran, inflows came before crop prices moved significantly. About a third of the world’s fertilizer trade moves through the Strait of Hormuz, according to the UN, and while farmers had already bought their fertilizer for the year by the time the war started, it could prove a problem for the next planting season. Farmers will likely use less fertilizer, according to Hanley, which means that crop yields will be smaller, and thus more expensive. “As this continues on through the fall … that’s going to make it a 2027 problem because that input cost goes up,” said Hanley. Those early inflows were likely investors “positioning themselves for a longer-term story relating to fertilizer issues.”

Agriculture ETFs, by the numbers:

• The Teucrium Wheat Fund (WEAT) is the best performer so far this year, up almost 28%, with $163 million in net flows and $320 million under management, according to ETF.com.
• Broad agriculture funds are garnering lower returns than individual crop funds, with the Invesco DB Agriculture Fund (DBA) up about 11% so far this year.
• Meanwhile, agribusiness funds are up, but not quite as high as crop funds. The VanEck Agribusiness ETF (MOO) is up 17% this year, with almost $319 million in net flows and about $1 billion under management.

The Grass Is Greener Where You Water It: Agribusiness and agriculture stocks “tend to move very close together since farmers tend to make their planting decisions based on what crop prices are doing,” said Seth Goldstein, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar. “We’ve recently seen crop prices rise, and so that’s been leading to an outperformance of the actual crops versus the agribusiness.”