Dive Brief:

• Global cybersecurity spending is projected to surge in coming years as artificial intelligence tools like chatbots and agents proliferate, creating new risks that force enterprises to shore up their information technology defenses, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analysts.
• Enterprise-wide deployment of generative AI is poised to accelerate through the first half of this year, in part due to the recent rise of Chinese tech startup DeepSeek, which will likely help to lower the cost of adoption, the analysts said in a Thursday research note. This in turn could increase the need for cybersecurity investments, they wrote.
• “DeepSeek drives proliferation of open-source LLMs [large language models], creating vulnerabilities such as prompt injection attacks, which will result in companies boosting their cybersecurity defenses,” Mandeep Singh, global head of technology research at Bloomberg Intelligence and a lead analyst behind the report, said via email.

Dive Insight:

The rapid adoption of generative AI in recent years has made CFOs determined to commit substantial investments toward cybersecurity upgrades, a recent Grant Thornton survey found.

Sixty-nine percent of respondents expected cybersecurity expenses to increase over the next 12 months — a 16-quarter high and an increase of 16 percentage points over the third quarter.

“Cybersecurity around AI is very new,” Derek Han, a cybersecurity and privacy principal in Grant Thornton’s Risk Advisory group, said in a report on the findings. “People are investing in this area because they want to make sure they control those risks.”

The total cybersecurity market could reach $338 billion by 2033, up from about $152.5 billion in 2023, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts found.

The expansion of large language models — partly fueled by the impact of DeepSeek — could drive above-trend growth in cybersecurity segments like software monitoring, cloud workload security and data-loss prevention, they said.

Their analysis comes as DeepSeek’s rise has jolted the AI market, resulting in both new opportunities and risks for enterprises.

The Chinese tech startup has attracted global attention after releasing an open-source AI model that it claims was built at a low cost compared with U.S. rivals like ChatGPT. 

While open-source LLM models offer flexibility and cost savings, they can also have hidden vulnerabilities that require more spending on monitoring and data-security products, the Bloomberg Intelligence report said.

The “software observability” segment of the cybersecurity market could be worth $53 billion by 2033, up from $19.2 billion in 2023, according to the analysts’ projections.

Meanwhile, the need to authenticate AI agents — tools designed to take on workplace tasks — could accelerate growth in the identity management segment, driving its value to about $50.3 billion in 2033, up from $20 billion in 2023, they predicted.