Are CoreWeave, Nebius, IREN risky? OpenAI co-founder warns: AI agents may turn the new cloud into cyber attack targets

The Zhitong Finance App learned that as AI Agent (AI Agent) capabilities become more mature, the cybersecurity risks brought about by them are causing high alert from industry leaders. Ilya Sutskever, co-founder of Safe SuperIntelligence and OpenAI, recently warned that if AI agents can operate autonomously and replicate themselves, then a new cloud service provider (Neocloud) that provides computing power for the AI boom may become the primary target of attack.

Sutskever wrote on the X platform: “New cloud service providers have limited cybersecurity protection. The next time AI agents successfully break out of human control, they're likely to try to take over a new cloud service provider to run more copies. That would be very dangerous.”

He called on new cloud service providers to “significantly strengthen cybersecurity” and urged companies with strong cybersecurity models to help protect infrastructure.

Nikesh Arora, CEO of cybersecurity giant Palo Alto Networks (PANW.US), quickly responded: “Let them come to me. I have lots of ideas to help.”

New cloud operators CoreWeave (CRWV.US), Nebius (NBIS.US), and IREN Ltd (IREN.US) fell more than 2% before the US stock market on Wednesday.

The rise of AI raises cybersecurity concerns

As AI technology becomes more sophisticated, its ability to launch faster and more threatening cyber attacks also soars, and the urgency of cybersecurity defense is being pushed to a new level.

On August 27, local time, more than 100 technology and finance companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, jointly issued an open letter calling for speeding up the construction of cyber defenses. The open letter warns that in the coming months, as AI model capabilities continue to improve, AI-driven cyber attacks will become “more widespread and complex.” Hospitals, water treatment facilities, and the infrastructure that supports the operation of the Internet may all be at risk.

Just the day before the open letter, OpenAI released a 37-page technical report detailing how its AI model invaded Hugging Face. This cybersecurity incident, characterized by OpenAI as an “unprecedented” cybersecurity incident, caused strong shock in the global technology community and regulators.

OpenAI warned in a technical report: “This incident shows that autonomous agents can work collaboratively, bypass production environment safety control measures, and successfully attack enhanced production environments. This highlights the urgent need for organizations to update their security policies, controls, and response capabilities to address this evolving threat landscape.”

In response to this intrusion, Zscaler's chief information security officer Sam Curry warned: “Pandora's box has been opened.” The incident quickly alerted regulators. US congressmen then proposed an “artificial intelligence kill switch bill” to give federal government agencies the power to order AI companies to shut down models that pose a threat to human life or the economy.

In addition to computing power, security has become a key variable in the new cloud investment narrative

The new cloud operator has taken steps in cybersecurity. CoreWeave said that its AI-native cloud has fully integrated security protection, covering aspects such as identity and access management, Kubernetes and container security, encryption and network control.

Nebius, on the other hand, strengthened security and compliance controls in its AI cloud and partnered with CrowdStrike to extend enterprise-grade protection to the full infrastructure stack.

Cybersecurity capabilities may be becoming an increasingly critical part of the new cloud investment narrative.

Xinyun's performance is running wild, and the stock price is mixed

As Sutskever issued the warning, CoreWeave, iREN, and Nebius were rapidly expanding infrastructure for training and running AI models.

In terms of performance, CoreWeave's second-quarter revenue reached US$2.58 billion, up about 110% year over year, exceeding market expectations; backlog orders climbed to US$104.2 billion. The company also raised its 2026 capital expenditure forecast.

Nebius grew even more rapidly, with second-quarter revenue surging 454% year over year to US$582.3 million. IREN, on the other hand, accelerated the transformation from a Bitcoin mining company to an AI infrastructure operator. Its AI cloud revenue for the 2026 fiscal year increased nearly sevenfold year-on-year to reach US$128.8 million, although net loss unexpectedly increased to US$684 million in the fourth fiscal quarter.

For retail investors, IREN appears to be their first choice in this sector. According to Stocktwits data, retail investors are “bearish” on CoreWeave and Nebius, while “extremely bullish” on IREN.

Since this year, IREN shares have fallen 2.5%, while CoreWeave has risen 14.3% and Nebius has risen 138%.