AI executives ramp up personal security spending after attacks and threats against industry leaders

AI company executives are increasing their personal-security spending as opposition to the industry produces real-world threats and violence, according to people familiar with the trend.

The triggers are on the public record. On April 10, 2026, a Texas man threw an incendiary device at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s San Francisco home and was charged with attempted murder and attempted arson; a recovered manifesto called for killing AI chief executives and investors. Around the same period, an intruder entered Anthropic’s San Francisco office lobby, showed a security guard an envelope marked with a senior Anthropic executive’s name, and said the executive would be killed.

The threat data points the same way. Liferaft, a threat-monitoring firm, recorded a sevenfold increase in digital threats aimed at AI leaders and data centers between late February and May 2026.

Corporate spending has followed the threat curve. Among S&P 500 technology companies, 38.1% disclosed executive-protection costs in 2025, up from 26.8% in 2021. At the company level the jumps are sharper: Palantir’s executive-protection spending rose 150% to nearly $3 million last year, according to its proxy filing, while Oracle’s climbed 85.5% to $5.6 million. Some leaders have begun traveling with armed guards.

The figures come from corporate disclosures and one monitoring firm’s tally, and a rising security line item can reflect broader executive-protection inflation as much as any single threat. What the numbers do show is that AI firms now treat physical risk to their leaders as a budgeted cost of doing business.

The open question is whether the backlash stays aimed at individuals or hardens into organized action against the data centers and offices the industry is building out.