Cyberrisk and AI Firms

Abstract Does AI make firms vulnerable or resilient to cyberrisk? We develop a firm-year measure of AI intensity for U.S. listed firms using patents and 10-K business descriptions. A 1-standard-deviation increase in cyberrisk reduces patenting by 25%–30% for non-AI firms, with larger declines in data-intensive technologies. Frontier AI firms are much less affected, and their valuations rise when cyberrisk is high. This resilience does not extend to firms that adopt external AI tools without internal AI innovation. The evidence fits two channels: cyberrisk raises the cost of data-intensive innovation, and internal AI development builds organizational capacity to sustain innovation under cyberrisk.