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.

💥Yield!💥

Beyond Meat’s Q2 2026 revenue fell 8.2% as U.S. retail and foodservice volumes declined, while a flatter, not inverted, Treasury curve…

Research Roundup Vol. LIV

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

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…

KRYS · short

Krystal Biotech INC

Krystal Biotech is a profitable commercial-stage biotech with an $8.7 billion enterprise value and one FDA-approved topical gene therapy,…

AnaptysBio (ANAB)

AnaptysBio’s Jemperli royalty receipts rise after a Sagard financing obligation ends in 2027.

What I've Been Reading

Yesway, Dollar General and Expedia feature in a research roundup spanning convenience retail, discount stores and AI-driven travel search.

Everyone Bought the Shovels

Element Solutions sells consumable chipmaking chemistry, with a $75 target from $44 based on an AI-driven semiconductor-materials rerating.

Under The Hood - Rollins ($ROL)

Rollins ($ROL) pairs automatically renewing pest-control contracts with route density and family-business acquisitions, producing 24…

Publications we follow

Every publication on this site, hand-picked.

110 publications

Newsletters 93

X accounts we follow

Every account on this site, hand-picked.

72 accounts

Investor letters we follow

189 firms

Sectors

Ordered by how often our editor reaches for them.