CrowdStrike

CrowdStrike was founded in 2011. Co-founder George Kurtz has served as the company’s president, chief executive officer and a director since November 2011; he previously founded the security technology company Foundstone and served as its chief executive officer until it was acquired by McAfee in October 2004, then held executive roles at McAfee, including executive vice president and worldwide chief technology officer from October 2009 to October 2011. The other co-founder, Dmitri Alperovitch, had been vice president of threat research at McAfee and served as CrowdStrike’s chief technology officer from November 2011.⁠[1][2][2][2][2][2]

The company launched its threat intelligence product in July 2012, its endpoint detection and response (EDR) capabilities in June 2013 and its threat hunting cloud module in August 2013, which became what is now Falcon OverWatch and Falcon Insight.⁠[2][2][2][2]

In February 2017, the company launched its full next-generation antivirus cloud module (Falcon Prevent), along with an IT hygiene module and a multi-product go-to-market strategy, entering the next-generation antivirus market; later that year it added malware search, sandbox and vulnerability management modules.⁠[2][2][2][2][2]

In April 2018, the company launched the managed Falcon Complete cloud module; it added a device control module in August and received authorization under the U.S. Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) in September.⁠[2][2][2]

CrowdStrike’s initial public offering prospectus was dated June 11, 2019; it offered 18,000,000 shares of Class A common stock at $34 per share, listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol CRWD. The company had a dual-class structure in which each Class B share carried ten votes. Before the offering closed on June 14, the company filed an amended and restated certificate of incorporation. Its headquarters were then in Sunnyvale, California.⁠[2][2][2][2][2][3][2]

In fiscal 2019 (ended January 31, 2019), before the listing, total revenue was $249.8 million, up 110% year over year, and annual recurring revenue (ARR) was $312.7 million, up 121%.⁠[2][2]

On September 30, 2020, CrowdStrike acquired all of the equity of Preempt Security, Inc.⁠[4]

On March 5, 2021, CrowdStrike acquired Humio Limited, a provider of high-performance cloud log management and observability technology.⁠[4]

On November 29, 2021, CrowdStrike acquired Secure Circle, LLC, a SaaS-based cybersecurity service that extends Zero Trust security to data on the endpoint.⁠[4]

On September 28, 2023, CrowdStrike acquired all of the equity of Bionic Stork, Ltd.⁠[5]

On March 26, 2024, CrowdStrike acquired all of the equity of Flow Security Ltd.⁠[5]

At 04:09 UTC on July 19, 2024, as part of regular operations, CrowdStrike released a content configuration update (Rapid Response Content) for the Windows version of its Falcon sensor that caused certain customers’ Windows systems to crash; the company reverted the update at 05:27 UTC. Affected were Windows hosts running sensor version 7.11 and above that were online during that window and received the update; Mac and Linux hosts were not affected. In an 8-K filed with the SEC, the company said the event was not caused by a cyberattack.⁠[6][7][7][6][7]

MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft is a technology company founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975 and headquartered in Redmond, Washington, with businesses spanning Windows, Microsoft 365, Azure, enterprise software, artificial intelligence, gaming and devices.Open the full entry estimated that the update affected 8.5 million Windows devices, or less than one percent of all Windows machines; Microsoft deployed hundreds of engineers and experts to work directly with customers to restore services.⁠[8][8]

On July 30, 2024, investors filed a putative securities class action against the company and certain officers in federal court in the Western District of Texas, alleging false or misleading statements. On January 12, 2026, the court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss; the plaintiffs said they would not amend the complaint, the court entered final judgment and closed the case on January 28, and the plaintiffs did not appeal within the time permitted, so the judgment is final.⁠[1][1][1]

From September 2024, several shareholder derivative suits alleging breach of fiduciary duty and other claims were filed against certain officers and directors in federal court in the Western District of Texas and in the Delaware Court of Chancery; they have been consolidated and stayed.⁠[1][1][1][1]

On August 5 and 19, 2024, travelers whose flights were delayed or canceled because of the incident filed two putative class actions in federal court in the Western District of Texas, later consolidated, asserting negligence and public nuisance among other claims. On June 18, 2025, the district court granted the company’s motion to dismiss and entered final judgment; the plaintiffs appealed to the Fifth Circuit on June 25, and as of March 2026 the appeal was pending.⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

On August 6, 2024, CrowdStrike published its root cause analysis: a new IPC Template Type defined 21 input parameter fields, but the integration code that invoked the Content Interpreter supplied only 20 input values, a mismatch that evaded multiple layers of build validation and testing. The crash resulted from a confluence of three issues: the mismatch between the 21 inputs validated by the Content Validator and the 20 provided to the Content Interpreter, a latent out-of-bounds read issue in the Content Interpreter, and the lack of a specific test for non-wildcard matching criteria in the 21st field. As of July 29, about 99% of Windows sensors were back online.⁠[9][9][9][9]

The improvements the company committed to included a staggered deployment strategy for Rapid Response Content, gradually rolling updates out to larger portions of the sensor base starting with a canary deployment.⁠[6]

On August 28, 2024, CrowdStrike reported results for the second quarter of fiscal 2025, with ending ARR up 32% year over year to $3.86 billion. George Kurtz said that after working with customers to recover from the July 19 incident, the company had emerged more resilient and more customer-focused; in the quarter, LogScale Next-Gen SIEM, Identity Protection and Cloud Security together surpassed $1 billion in ending ARR.⁠[10][10][10]

After the incident, the company introduced customer commitment packages that included discounting, additional modules, professional services, flexible payment terms or subscription extensions; the company acknowledged that the incident harmed its brand and reputation and that some existing or prospective customers deferred or decided against purchases, while some terminated or did not renew their contracts.⁠[1][1][1]

On October 25, 2024, Delta Air Lines sued CrowdStrike, Inc. in the Superior Court for Fulton County, Georgia, alleging computer trespass, breach of contract, fraud by omission, strict-liability product defect, gross negligence and deceptive and unfair business practices, among other claims, and seeking unspecified damages including punitive damages. The case was transferred to the Metro Atlanta Business Case Division; on May 16, 2025, the court granted CrowdStrike’s motion to dismiss in part and denied it in part, and as of March 2026 the case was in discovery.⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

On November 20, 2024, CrowdStrike acquired all of the equity of A.S. Adaptive Shield Ltd., a SaaS-based cybersecurity company.⁠[5]

On December 11, 2024, because outstanding Class B shares had fallen below 5% of all shares, all Class B common stock automatically converted one-for-one into Class A common stock under the company’s charter, ending the dual-class structure; the Class A shares continued to trade on Nasdaq under the symbol CRWD.⁠[11][11][11][11]

On May 6, 2025, CrowdStrike announced a strategic plan to evolve its operations toward its goal of $10 billion in ending ARR, expected to eliminate about 500 positions, or about 5% of its global workforce, at a cost of about $36 million to $53 million. In a note to employees, George Kurtz said AI was a force multiplier throughout the business and that the company would continue to hire prudently, mainly in customer-facing and product engineering roles.⁠[12][12][12][12][12][12]

On September 12, 2025, CrowdStrike acquired Onum Technology Inc.; on September 26, it acquired Pangea Cyber Corporation, which offers AI detection and response solutions.⁠[1][1]

On March 3, 2026, CrowdStrike reported results for fiscal 2026, ended January 31, 2026: total revenue was $4.81 billion, up 22%, including $4.56 billion in subscription revenue; ending ARR was $5.25 billion, up 24%; GAAP net loss was $162.5 million; operating cash flow was $1.61 billion and free cash flow $1.24 billion. As of January 31, 2026, the company had 10,698 full-time employees. Chief Financial Officer Burt Podbere set out a goal of $20 billion in ending ARR by fiscal 2036.⁠[13][13][13][13][13][1][13]

On April 6, 2026, CrowdStrike’s board added $500 million to the share repurchase authorization, bringing the total to $1.5 billion; the company had already repurchased 413,130 shares at an average price of $364.57, for $150.6 million.⁠[14][14]

On August 26, 2026, CrowdStrike reported results for the second quarter of fiscal 2027, ended July 31, 2026: total revenue was $1.47 billion, up 26%; ending ARR was $5.84 billion, up 25%, with a record $332.8 million of net new ARR in the quarter; GAAP net income was $5.3 million; and cash and cash equivalents were $5.01 billion as of July 31.⁠[15][15][15][15]

On October 7, 2026, CrowdStrike Intelligence disclosed a targeted campaign against South Korean financial organizations that resulted in exfiltrated data, active from late September to early October 2026. Reportedly, at one bank a loan progress inquiry service used by financial brokers was breached, and at another an employee mobile work-support system was compromised. In open directories controlled by the attacker, CrowdStrike found Claude Code session histories, ARTEX configuration files and Claude memory files.⁠[16][16][16]

CrowdStrike said the attacker used ARTEX, a recently released open-source agentic penetration testing tool developed in China, together with large language models; the ARTEX instance used DeepSeek v4.1-flash as its primary LLM backend, and the attacker also used GLM-5.3 from Zhipu AI and Grok 4.6 in additional Claude Code sessions. The activity has not been attributed to a named adversary; CrowdStrike assessed with moderate confidence that the attacker is likely a Chinese speaker and financially motivated, and expects adversaries to keep experimenting with AI tooling in their operations.⁠[16][16][16][16]

CrowdStrike positions Falcon as a cloud-native security platform with AI at its core that collects security and enterprise data through a single lightweight sensor and makes protection decisions in real time; the platform consists of the sensor and a unified intelligence layer called the Enterprise Graph. Revenue is mainly subscription-based, driven by the number of subscription customers, endpoints per customer and cloud modules subscribed.⁠[1][1][1]

At its listing the company was headquartered in Sunnyvale, California; its annual report filed in March 2021 still gave Sunnyvale as its principal executive offices, while the report filed in March 2022 gave Austin, Texas. The company describes itself as operating with a remote-first culture.⁠[17][4][17]

As of March 2026, George Kurtz was president, chief executive officer and a director, Burt Podbere was chief financial officer, Michael Sentonas was president and Gerhard Watzinger was chairman of the board.⁠[1][1][1][1]

CrowdStrike received requests for information from the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission relating to its recognition of revenue and reporting of ARR for transactions with certain customers, the July 19 incident and related matters; the company said it was cooperating and providing information, and other governmental authorities and third parties have also made inquiries about the incident.⁠[1][1][1]

CrowdStrike: Official website: https://www.crowdstrike.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[7]

X: Public account: https://x.com/CrowdStrike (opens in a new window)⁠[18]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/crowdstrike (opens in a new window)⁠[18]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/crowdstrike (opens in a new window)⁠[18]