Fortinet's earnings were so good the cybersecurity company is set to join the exclusive club of S&P 500 stocks that have doubled in 2026.

Just eight of the index's stocks are up at least 100% this year and Fortinet is on the cusp of making it nine. The shares, up 93% over the past 12 months through Wednesday, jumped 11% ahead of the open.

Its peer Datadog isn't far off -- its shares are up 94% this year and pointing another 2% higher in premarket trading. Palo Alto Networks is up 71%, while CrowdStrike has climbed 53%.

It's quite the turnaround after the sector's stocks were hit hard early in the year after Anthropic released a new Claude AI security tool. The narrative has changed dramatically and now cybersecurity companies are seen as even more critical in the age of AI.

IBM helped embed that view in investors' minds earlier this month, when CEO Arvind Krishna said its clients were "distracted with rapidly-evolving, industrywide cybersecurity concerns."

Fortinet's earnings report late Wednesday was further confirmation that cybersecurity looks like the new hot AI sector.

"As organizations deploy and use AI tools throughout their operations, they realize they must modernize their security to handle the complex, high-speed threat of [the] AI era," CEO Ken Xie said during the company's earnings call. Naturally, he feels Fortinet is "uniquely positioned" to capitalize.

Fortinet reported adjusted earnings per share of 90 cents in the second quarter, beating analysts' estimates of 75 cents. Guidance of EPS between 83 and 87 cents topped Wall Street's 76 cents view, too. Significantly, its outlook for billings of $2.25 billion to $2.35 billion in the third quarter was ahead of estimates of $2.26 billion.

For those wondering, the other stocks to have at least doubled in 2026 are: Sandisk, Dell, Seagate, Western Digital, Micron, Intel, DaVita and Advanced Micro Devices.