人工智能推动下一阶段网络安全投资（英）2025

EMERGING TECH RESEARCHAI Propels Next Phase of Institutional Research Group Cybersecurity Investment Dimitri ZabelinSenior Research Analyst, AI andCybersecuritydimitri.zabelin@pitchbook.com pbinstitutionalresearch@pitchbook.com The cyber singularity Published on December 23, 2025 PitchBook is a Morningstar company providing the most comprehensive, mostaccurate, and hard-to-find data for professionals doing business in the private markets. Contents Key takeaways •AI-native cybersecurity reached a structural inflection point in 2025, accountingfor 50.5% of global cybersecurity VC deals as AI-driven threats scaled faster thanlegacy defenses. •AI cyber companies command a persistent valuation and returns premium, withhigher median deal sizes, faster fundraising cadence, and stronger MOICs thannon-AI peers across stages. •Public-sector spending and regulatory momentum are reinforcing enterprisedemand, accelerating adoption of AI-native security platforms across criticalinfrastructure, cloud, and identity environments. Executive summary AI is reshaping cybersecurity by changing how fast threats emerge and how quicklyorganizations must respond. Attackers can now use AI tools to map targets, automateparts of intrusions, and generate convincing digital deceptions that are harder fortraditional systems to catch. As AI becomes easier to access through public interfacesand online services, the range of vulnerable systems grows across software, data, andsupply chains. Security teams are responding by adopting AI-native platforms that learn normalbehavior across identity, cloud, and network environments and generate their owninsights instead of relying only on rules or signatures. This shift is visible in privatemarkets. AI cyber startups attract higher median deal sizes, stronger valuationstep-ups, slightly faster fundraising cycles, and higher multiples on invested capital(MOICs). In 2025, companies building AI-driven cyber tools represented 50.5% of allglobal cybersecurity VC deals by count. Geopolitical tensions and public policy amplify this momentum. State-backedoperators increasingly target private-sector infrastructure, and governments acrossthe US, EU, and Asia-Pacific (APAC) region are raising budgets and rolling out newprograms in response. Cybersecurity spending continues to grow faster than globalGDP and is concentrating around platforms that offer broad coverage and strongcustomer retention. AI has become both a driver of new cyber risks and a durableengine of long-term market opportunity. Market layout: Cybersecurity in transition Platform consolidation: High M&A activity, limited IPOs For broader market context, we partnered with Malik Khan at Morningstar, whoseindustry analysisprovides the foundational benchmarks and structural trends citedthroughout this section. We expect cybersecurity buyers to consolidate budgets around platform vendors capable of delivering end-to-end protection across thestack. Managing dozens of point solutions has created operational drag, integrationchallenges, and higher total cost of ownership. This will push enterprises towardunified ecosystems with scale advantages. The largest players can fund continuous product innovation and pursue targeted M&Ato close capability gaps, further concentrating share among incumbents. Despiteaccelerating consolidation, cybersecurity remains one of the most fragmented cornersof enterprise software—the 14 public vendors we track accounted for just 18% ofglobal industry revenue in 2023. Economic moats: Scale, switching costs, and integration depth Economic moats in cybersecurity stem primarily from high switching costs andnetwork effects tied to proprietary data. Once deployed, organizations are reluctant toreplace core security infrastructure, given the complexity and risk of migration. Thisstickiness is reflected in retention rates exceeding 90%, implying customer lifetimesof a decade or more. Vendors with the broadest reach across end markets tend tocommand the widest moats. Wide-moat companies typically operate across four or more product categories, whilenarrow-moat peers average closer to three. Those confined to one or two segmentsstruggle to achieve durable scale or pricing power. There is a clear reference forunified vendors versus fragmented tool kits. Structural demand Cybersecurity budgets have historically proven resilient, even through periods ofeconomic stress. Over the past 20 years, spending on security has expanded atroughly three times the pace of global GDP. Our analysis shows little correlation between macroeconomic volatility and cybersecurity outlays, underscoring thesector’s defensive profile. As digital environments grow more complex and attacksurfaces widen, we expect security spending to continue outpacing GDP g rowththrough the coming decade. Expanding cloud infrastructure adds significant complexity to ente rprise ITenvironments. This heightened complexity requires new tools and cap abilit