Fastly Inc. gained 14.92 percent on Monday, closing at $27.42 per share, as investors positioned ahead of the company’s Investor Day meeting scheduled for September 22. The stock advance reflected market optimism tied to recent comments from Anthropic’s Chief Executive Officer regarding AI development risks and the resulting potential for increased demand for security services.
On the same trading day, Fastly announced the launch of new runtime control, firewall, and API Security capabilities designed to address enterprise AI governance and protection needs. The runtime control feature enables organizations to route model calls through a single endpoint across multiple providers while protecting underlying credentials through virtual keys. The firewall component targets protection against attacks on AI applications, including prompt injection threats. The API Security offering allows organizations to control how AI agents access enterprise APIs and enforce API contracts.
Fastly noted that machine-generated traffic across its network reached 50 percent in July and August, while AI traffic grew 6.5 times faster than human traffic from January through May. The company also cited McKinsey research indicating that 93 percent of organizations exceeded their AI budgets, underscoring the financial pressures accompanying AI adoption.
Despite these growth prospects, institutional investor conviction appeared limited. The number of hedge fund holders in Fastly declined to 28 during the second quarter from 41 in the first quarter, with combined holdings falling 22.8 percent to $478.2 million from $619.2 million on a quarter-over-quarter basis. Market participants indicated they would monitor updated institutional ownership data as the third quarter concluded to assess whether hedge fund positions remained reduced or began recovering.
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