Palo Alto Networks (PANW) heads into earnings this week with its stock up more than 60% year-to-date and trading near all-time highs. That's a heck of a run for a cybersecurity company. But according to one investor, the rally isn't just about firewalls and threat detection—it's about something bigger.

John Belton, a portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds, thinks we're living through what he calls "a second ChatGPT-like moment." The first one, back in late 2022, kicked off the generative AI boom. This time, the catalyst is AI agents—software that can autonomously perform tasks—moving from research projects into real business tools that are already generating tens of billions of dollars in annualized revenue.

That shift, Belton argues, is creating new winners beyond the usual suspects like Nvidia (NVDA) and other AI infrastructure plays. The market's enthusiasm for AI has accelerated thanks to more capable models and agentic coding platforms like Claude Code and OpenAI Codex. The key difference? AI agents are no longer futuristic concepts. They're being deployed across enterprises to automate software development, workflows, and business processes. As Belton put it, AI became "a revenue story, rather than just a research story."

So where does Palo Alto fit in? Unlike traditional software, AI agents are always-on, connected to multiple systems, and capable of accessing large amounts of data. As organizations deploy more agents, they also create more identities, APIs, and potential entry points for cyberattacks. That dynamic is increasingly leading investors to view cybersecurity as a second-order AI trade. Palo Alto, with its broad platform spanning network, cloud, and security operations, is well-positioned to benefit as enterprises look to secure their expanding AI environments.

For much of the past two years, the AI investment story centered on chips, servers, and cloud infrastructure. Now investors are beginning to ask a different question: who benefits after AI gets deployed? Palo Alto's rally suggests the market may already have an answer. If a "second ChatGPT-like moment" is indeed underway, the next wave of AI winners may not just be the companies building AI. They could also be the companies protecting it.