Bullpen.News From Edwin Dorsey
Get Daily Recap Feedback

Wednesday, September 30, 2026

Back to today

From X

@convequity

Convequity on X

$PANW and $DDOG both put something real inside the customer's systems that an AI lab cannot recreate by calling SaaS APIs. Palo Alto's install is still harder to replace with AI. 1. Datadog's agents mostly sit outside the traffic and watch production. A bad agent version rarely takes the business down the way a bad firewall rule can. 2. Palo Alto's firewalls and SASE cloud gateways sit inside the traffic and decide what to allow, deny, decrypt or inspect. A wrong allow or deny hits live traffic and live machines. 3. Many Datadog users start the day in a coding agent and open Datadog when something looks wrong. Many Palo Alto users start in its console and stay there through alerts, triage and response. For them, an outside AI agent is an add-on. Cybersecurity work splits two ways on AI risk. Work done before code ships ("shift-left") or from outside the traffic, such as scanning code, checking cloud settings and sorting collected alerts, gives answers that are easy to check. AI agents are already taking over more of it. Work in live traffic and on live machines ("shift-right") means judging whether an attacker is still inside and whether blocking them is safe. That is more ambiguous and mistakes cost more, so enterprises move slower and demand earned trust. Palo Alto is not risk-free. In our view its exposure is the easily checked detection and vulnerability work inside its platform, which AI agents can take over sooner. The threat is not an AI-native firewall startup.

Investor Letters

All letters

Research Roundup Vol. LIV

Research Roundup covers AAON's data-center cooling ramp, Knife River's margin recovery, ChronoScale's Microsoft-backed neocloud buildout…

AAON $6.8BKNF $2.9B
Monte Independent Investment Research

Toll roads in the sky

Asia's elevator boom favors maintenance and modernization providers, with Otis deriving nearly 90% of operating profit from after-sales…

OTIS $24B
Asian Century Stocks 1 click
VSEC · long

Vse CORP

VSE Corp trades at $185, with a stated $246 fair value and 2027 estimated EV/EBITDA of 15x.

VSEC $4.6B
Value Investors Club 1 click

Nomad Foods - The Yield Machine

Nomad Foods combines leading European frozen-food brands with a high dividend yield, buybacks and decade-low valuation, while private-label…

NOMD $1.5B
D Invests

Doubling Down on Iran and OXY

Occidental Petroleum is positioned for oil above $80, with a prolonged Iran conflict and Gulf supply shut-ins pushing prices into triple…

OXY $55B
Open Insights

TIC Solutions: Thesis Check

TIC Solutions' NV5 merger lifted consulting and geospatial growth and margins, while its 52%-of-revenue inspection unit stayed flat after…

TIC $1.8B
Kairos Research

Publications we follow

Every publication on this site, hand-picked.

110 publications

Newsletters 93

YouTube 4

Blogs 12

Seeking Alpha 42 of 206

Nominate a publication

X accounts we follow

Every account on this site, hand-picked.

72 accounts
Nominate an account

Investor letters we follow

189 firms

Sectors

Ordered by how often our editor reaches for them.