The cybersecurity industry is entering an unusual period in which the technology being used to attack organizations is advancing at the same time as the technology being used to protect them. Artificial intelligence has the potential to widen or close that gap, depending on how quickly defenders can put increasingly capable systems to work.
OpenAI is attempting to accelerate the defensive side of that equation. In a new open letter titled “A Call to Action on Cyber Defense.” OpenAI President and Co-Founder Greg Brockman is calling on companies, governments and technology providers to coordinate their efforts around AI-powered cyber defense.
Among the first-day signatories are Palo Alto Networks, Mate Security, and ServiceNow, putting the three companies among a select group of market leaders backing the initiative from its launch. The participation is particularly notable for Mate Security, which is part of a relatively small group of companies developing an agentic approach to cyber defense.
A Narrow Window
The premise of OpenAI’s initiative is straightforward: the cybersecurity industry cannot afford to wait until AI-enabled attacks have fully matured before modernizing defensive capabilities.
“We have a limited window to strengthen cyber defenses,” the letter says.
OpenAI predicts that AI-enabled cyber attacks will become more widespread and sophisticated as models continue to improve. The company points to a broad range of potential targets, including hospitals, water treatment plants and the infrastructure that supports the internet.
But the letter is not simply a warning about AI.
OpenAI argues that today’s advances also give defenders an opportunity to address weaknesses that have remained embedded in enterprise and public-sector environments for years.
The Security Debt Problem
Many of the vulnerabilities highlighted in the letter are hardly new. Organizations continue to struggle with unpatched software, weak authentication, excessive permissions, misconfigurations and legacy systems that are difficult to upgrade.
The difference is that AI could change the economics of addressing those problems.
OpenAI argues that cyber-capable AI can bring specialized security capabilities to a larger number of defenders while making core security tasks “faster, cheaper and better.”
That proposition could be particularly important for organizations with small security teams. Instead of expecting a limited number of specialists to manually investigate every alert or vulnerability, AI agents could increasingly take responsibility for portions of the investigative and remediation process.
Why Mate Security Is Significant
This is where Mate Security’s participation becomes particularly relevant.
Mate is building an open foundation for agentic cyber defense, positioning AI agents as active participants in security investigations rather than simply assistants to human analysts.
The company’s Gamebooks technology is designed to provide agents with structured investigation procedures while allowing them to reason, pivot and act as an investigation develops.
That combination addresses a central issue surrounding autonomous security systems. Security teams want AI to operate with enough independence to reduce workload, but they also need predictable processes and organizational controls.
Agentic cyber defense attempts to bridge that gap.
Palo Alto Networks And The Broader Market
Palo Alto Networks represents a different but equally important part of the cybersecurity landscape.
Its participation demonstrates that the move toward AI-enabled defense is not limited to emerging vendors or companies built exclusively around autonomous agents. Established cybersecurity platforms are also becoming part of the transition toward AI-driven security operations.
ServiceNow And The Remediation Gap
ServiceNow’s inclusion extends that picture into the enterprise systems where security work is carried out.
The letter does not stop at detection and investigation. It asks organizations to fix their most dangerous weaknesses, verify that those fixes work and measure progress by tangible outcomes, including how quickly attacks are contained.
Those steps depend on coordination across teams that often sit outside the security function. A confirmed vulnerability still has to be assigned, scheduled, applied and closed out, and that process is frequently where remediation stalls.
The presence of Palo Alto Networks, Mate Security and ServiceNow together therefore offers a snapshot of where the market is heading: established security infrastructure and enterprise workflow platforms are evolving alongside a new generation of AI-native and agentic security technologies.
A Shared Responsibility
OpenAI’s letter also makes clear that the company does not believe the future of cyber defense should be controlled by a single vendor.
“No single company should control the future,” it says, arguing for a collective response involving governments, cybersecurity companies, technology partners and frontier AI companies.
The letter calls for more threat-intelligence sharing, tested playbooks, authorized testing and practical assistance for critical infrastructure organizations.
For the companies, becoming first-day signatories puts them behind that broader industry effort at a pivotal moment.
The cybersecurity market has spent years discussing the potential of artificial intelligence. The latest initiative suggests that the conversation is moving into a more consequential phase: determining how quickly AI can become a practical, scalable and accountable tool for the people defending the world’s most important digital systems.