# Agents could cause a billion-dollar security incident this decade

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/agents-could-cause-a-billion-dollar-security-incident-this/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Matan Grinberg](https://realalpha.app/builders/matan-grinberg/) · Matan Grinberg is cofounder of Factory.
- Host: [Sabrina Halper](https://realalpha.app/people/sabrina-halper/) · Host, Sabrina Halper Show · Has worked as an investor at HOF Capital and founded SHS Media.
- Show: Sabrina Halper Show
- Episode: [Factory’s Matan Grinberg on Recursive Self-Improvement, Chinese Models & Lessons From String Theory](https://realalpha.app/v/-QQkpdS-Qjo/), Sep 2, 2026
- Moment: 38:37 to 41:06 of the episode (2 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/agents-could-cause-a-billion-dollar-security-incident-this/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/-QQkpdS-Qjo/?t=2317

## Quote

> “at some point in this decade, there is going to be, like, **a billion-dollar incident** that occurs because of agents.”
> — [Matan Grinberg](https://realalpha.app/builders/matan-grinberg/) at [39:28](https://realalpha.app/v/-QQkpdS-Qjo/?t=2368) · Sabrina Halper Show

## Takeaways

1. He predicts a billion-dollar incident caused by agents this decade.
2. He sees companies moving faster on capability than security.
3. Factory says agent swarms have tried to breach its systems.

## About this segment

Matan Grinberg says security is lagging behind agent adoption and predicts a billion-dollar incident this decade. He says Factory has already seen agent swarms try to breach its systems.

From “Factory’s Matan Grinberg on Recursive Self-Improvement, Chinese Models & Lessons From String Theory”, Sep 2, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/-QQkpdS-Qjo/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[38:49](https://realalpha.app/v/-QQkpdS-Qjo/?t=2329) because it feels like where we are now is we have like these really amazing agentic capabilities i feel like hackers can do a lot more with a lot less now and it doesn't feel like everyday consumers definitely aren't and even like most companies are like just trying to start adapting to this new reality of uh like how to basically defend against this like i don't know if those things are moving at the same time yeah i think right now people are moving very quickly on the like new capability and not as much on the security like this is this is a very big problem I think, unfortunately, it's probably one of those things where it'll take a very large incident for everyone to wake up and be like, oh, my God, wait, we need to really, like, secure everything.

[39:30](https://realalpha.app/v/-QQkpdS-Qjo/?t=2370) I've noticed the enterprise is starting to spend more time on this. So people are waking up to it. That said, I think my co-founder, Eno, had a prediction, which is at some point in this decade, there is going to be, like, a billion-dollar incident that occurs because of agents. um it honestly i think it all like maybe not one incident like security but there's a lot of uh things that people are doing with agents right now like we've had swarms of agents try to like kind of uh uh breach of our systems which has hasn't happened but or hasn't succeeded but there's been a we actually have an interesting blog post about like oh really yeah we used droids against these people who are using agents which was like crazy i think we called it the droid wars but yeah like agent uh cyber security is a brave new world it's wild do you have any reason to think that ai written code

[40:21](https://realalpha.app/v/-QQkpdS-Qjo/?t=2421) will be more vulnerable as as as more code out there is just like written by it's hard to say On one hand, it can be more robust because it's not prone to human mistakes. On the other hand, if, you know, if it was trained with some vulnerabilities in its latent space, it can be more methodically vulnerable, which is a weird dynamic. So I think we kind of have to be used to both. I will say probably in a few years, there'll be very few humans contributing code manually.

[40:49](https://realalpha.app/v/-QQkpdS-Qjo/?t=2449) Like you'll need AI written code just because it's probably more predictable as to how it's going to be.