Over 100 Firms, Including OpenAI and Anthropic, Flag Imminent Rise in AI-Driven Cyberattacks

More than 100 companies have put their names to an open letter released by OpenAI. It cautions that cyberattacks powered by AI are set to become both more common and more advanced over the next few months.

The signatories span technology, banking, insurance and semiconductor sectors. Among the names on the list are Anthropic, Microsoft, Google, Amazon Web Services (AWS), CrowdStrike, Cloudflare and Palo Alto Networks.

What the OpenAI Letter Calls For

Four groups are singled out in the letter as requiring action. All organisations must make cyber defence a leadership concern and address their most critical vulnerabilities.

Vendors of cybersecurity products need to ensure AI-driven defence tools can be deployed by operators of critical infrastructure. Governments ought to coordinate their response and back defence systems for hospitals, water utilities and local authorities.

Frontier AI companies are called on to grant model access, offer funding and provide training to defenders who are under-equipped.

“Today’s AI advances are already giving defenders new ways to fix weaknesses that have accumulated for years. If we act decisively, we can use the defenders’ window to make our digital world much more secure,” the letter states.

this is a critically important moment for cyber defense with AI; there is not much time to act.

we are happy if you want to work with us or any of our competitors or partners, but please take this moment seriously.

only an urgent and intense collective response will work.

— Sam Altman (@sama) August 27, 2026

The Current Threat Landscape Examined

Evidence backing the tech giant's prediction has already come in this year. TeamT5, a Taiwanese threat intelligence firm, discovered that groups linked to the Chinese state doubled their attack volume once they started using DeepSeek and other open-source models.

The decision was driven by cost, not by capability. In June, Anthropic came to a more general conclusion. After examining 832 banned accounts, the company determined that the proportion of attackers classified as medium-risk or above increased from 33% to 56% over a 12-month period.

The company also observed that AI now takes care of privilege escalation and lateral movement, tasks that used to demand technical expertise. This breaks the connection between how skilled an attacker is and how much harm they can inflict.

Genians, a South Korean company, discovered that Kimsuky—a group operating under North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau—was experimenting with locally developed AI tools.

TRM Labs gave criminal AI adoption a score of 54 out of 100 this year, compared to 28 in 2024. The company recorded 201 cryptocurrency hacks in the first half of 2026, versus 83 in the same period the year before.

These represent just a few of the numerous incidents recorded by researchers in 2026. According to the letter, the current AI advances can still be harnessed for long-term security gains that serve everyone.