Investing.com -- Goldman Sachs analysts said security companies are now viewed as beneficiaries of increased AI spending rather than being at risk from the technology. The firm expects security budgets related to AI may see growth as soon as the fourth quarter of 2026 or the first half of 2027, representing a two to three year lag from initial enterprise AI adoption.

The investment bank compared the timeline to the cloud computing cycle, which took five years for security spending to grow from less than 1% of cloud budgets to 2-5%. Counting 2025 as the starting year for enterprise AI inference use cases, Goldman Sachs projects this new security spending could add two to three percentage points to industry growth rates through 2028.

Goldman Sachs said the additional security budget will likely favor current market leaders. The firm explained that security roadmaps depend on machine learning innovation rather than generative AI innovation, making it difficult for new companies to match the advantages of established players with deep human reinforcement learning feedback loops and labeled datasets.

The analysts also noted that leading security companies are actively acquiring new technology assets from well-funded private companies. Goldman Sachs included scenarios for Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ: PANW), CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: CRWD), and Okta (NASDAQ: OKTA), indicating that all three companies can grow into their current valuations. The firm said Okta has the most potential for additional growth from its current levels.