CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc.
Company History
CrowdStrike History: Founding, Growth & Key Milestones
Founded 2011 in Austin, Texas
When was CrowdStrike founded?
CrowdStrike was founded in 2011 in Austin, Texas by George Kurtz, Dmitri Alperovitch and Gregg Marston, making it 15 years old.
- Founded
- 2011
- Founding place
- Austin, Texas
- Founders
- George Kurtz, Dmitri Alperovitch and Gregg Marston
- Headquarters today
- Austin, Texas
- Milestones documented
- 12 (2011–2026)
- Current CEO
- George Kurtz
- Acquisitions
- 6
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 2011 | Company Founded |
| 2013 | Falcon Platform Launches |
| 2016 | DNC Breach Investigation |
| 2017 | Series D at $1 Billion Valuation |
| 2019 | Nasdaq IPO |
| 2020 | Preempt Security Acquired |
| 2021 | Humio Acquisition and Move to Austin |
| 2023 | Charlotte AI Introduced |
| 2023 | Acquired Bionic |
| 2024 | S&P 500 Inclusion and July Outage |
| 2025 | Acquired Pangea |
| 2026 | $5 Billion ARR, Acquisitions, and Stock Split |
- Where was CrowdStrike founded?
- CrowdStrike was founded in Austin, Texas in 2011.
- Who founded CrowdStrike?
- CrowdStrike was founded by George Kurtz, Dmitri Alperovitch and Gregg Marston.
- When did CrowdStrike start?
- CrowdStrike was founded in 2011.
- How old is CrowdStrike?
- CrowdStrike is 15 years old as of 2026.
Founding Story
George Kurtz co-wrote the hacking book "Hacking Exposed", founded Foundstone, sold it to McAfee in 2004, and became McAfee's worldwide CTO. Kurtz has said the idea for CrowdStrike sharpened when he watched a fellow airline passenger wait a long time for antivirus software to load. He concluded that signature-based antivirus was too slow and too heavy to stop modern attackers. In 2011 he co-founded CrowdStrike with McAfee threat researcher Dmitri Alperovitch and former Foundstone finance executive Gregg Marston, backed by Warburg Pincus. They built a product that tracked attacker behavior from the cloud instead of scanning files.
Founders
George Kurtz
George Kurtz co-founded CrowdStrike in 2011 and has served as CEO since then, later also taking the title of president. He pushed the company to replace signature-based antivirus with a cloud-native, behavior-based platform. He led it through its 2019 Nasdaq IPO, the 2021 move to Austin, and the response to the July 2024 outage. By fiscal 2026 CrowdStrike reported $4.81 billion of revenue. Outside work, Kurtz races in professional endurance sports car events, including the 24 Hours of Le Mans. George Kurtz was born in 1970 in New Jersey. Education: Parsippany High School; Seton Hall University.
Dmitri Alperovitch
Dmitri Alperovitch co-founded CrowdStrike and served as its chief technology officer, building its threat intelligence practice and adversary-naming approach (for example "Fancy Bear" and "Cozy Bear"). He left the company in 2020 and co-founded the Silverado Policy Accelerator, a geopolitics and national security think tank. Dmitri Alperovitch was born in 1980 in Moscow. Education: Georgia Tech. Alperovitch was born in Russia in 1980 and is a naturalised US citizen. He was CrowdStrike's chief technology officer and now chairs the Silverado Policy Accelerator, a geopolitics think-tank in Washington, D.C.
Gregg Marston
Gregg Marston co-founded CrowdStrike in 2011 alongside George Kurtz and Dmitri Alperovitch. As the highly experienced financial architect of the trio, he secured the massive early venture capital rounds from Warburg Pincus that allowed the company to rapidly build its cloud-native architecture. He served as the company's first CFO before departing in 2015. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).
Key Milestones
Company Founded
George Kurtz, Dmitri Alperovitch, and Gregg Marston founded CrowdStrike to build a cloud-native alternative to signature-based antivirus.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgFalcon Platform Launches
CrowdStrike launched its Falcon endpoint platform, built around a lightweight sensor that streams behavioral data to the cloud.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgDNC Breach Investigation
CrowdStrike investigated the Democratic National Committee breach and attributed it to Russian state-linked groups it calls Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgSeries D at $1 Billion Valuation
CrowdStrike raised $100 million in May 2017 at a valuation of more than $1 billion.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgNasdaq IPO
CrowdStrike listed on Nasdaq under ticker CRWD in June 2019, pricing shares at $34 and raising about $612 million.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgPreempt Security Acquired
CrowdStrike bought the identity-security company Preempt Security in 2020 for about $96 million.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgHumio Acquisition and Move to Austin
CrowdStrike bought log-management company Humio for about $400 million (later Falcon LogScale) and moved its headquarters from Sunnyvale, California to Austin, Texas.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgCharlotte AI Introduced
CrowdStrike introduced Charlotte AI, a generative AI security assistant built into the Falcon platform.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgS&P 500 Inclusion and July Outage
CrowdStrike joined the S&P 500 in June 2024. On July 19, 2024 a faulty Channel File 291 content update crashed about 8.5 million Windows devices worldwide.
Source: sec.gov$5 Billion ARR, Acquisitions, and Stock Split
CrowdStrike ended fiscal 2026 with $5.25 billion of ARR, agreed to buy SGNL ($740 million) and Seraphic in January 2026, and completed a 4-for-1 stock split on July 2, 2026.
Source: ir.crowdstrike.comMajor Acquisitions
Humio (Falcon LogScale)
2021Added scalable, index-free log management to support Next-Gen SIEM and observability use cases.
Bionic
2023Added application security posture management (ASPM) to Falcon Cloud Security.
Flow Security
2024Added data security posture management (DSPM) for cloud and runtime data flows.
Pangea
2025Added AI detection and response to secure enterprise AI applications, models, and agents.
SGNL
2026Added continuous, real-time authorization that grants and revokes access for human and AI identities based on current risk.
Seraphic Security
2026Added browser runtime security, turning standard browsers into secure enterprise browsers.
Keep researching CrowdStrike
CrowdStrike Company History FAQ
What were the major historical milestones of CrowdStrike from 2011 to 2015?
Founded in 2011, CrowdStrike launched the Falcon platform in 2013, identified the Russian state cyber espionage campaign 'Energetic Bear' in 2014, investigated the Sony Pictures hack in 2014, and raised $100M led by CapitalG in 2015 to establish cloud EDR leadership.
How did CrowdStrike's investigation of the 2016 DNC breach impact global cybersecurity?
In June 2016, CrowdStrike was hired by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to investigate a network intrusion, publicly attributing the attack to two sophisticated Russian state intelligence groups ('Fancy Bear' and 'Cozy Bear'), a landmark finding later confirmed by the US intelligence community and Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
What occurred during CrowdStrike's Initial Public Offering in June 2019?
On June 12, 2019, CrowdStrike completed its IPO on the NASDAQ under the ticker 'CRWD', raising $612 million in one of the most successful software IPOs in history, with shares surging over 70% on its first day of trading.
How did CrowdStrike perform during the COVID-19 remote work shift in 2020?
As millions of corporate employees shifted to remote work in 2020, legacy corporate firewalls became obsolete. CrowdStrike's cloud-native Falcon platform surged in demand, protecting remote employee laptops across the globe and accelerating ARR past $1.0 billion.
When did CrowdStrike launch Charlotte AI and Falcon Next-Gen SIEM?
In 2023, CrowdStrike launched Charlotte AI (its generative AI security analyst assistant) and Falcon LogScale Next-Gen SIEM, expanding beyond traditional endpoint security into unified cybersecurity intelligence and autonomous remediation.
When was CrowdStrike added to the S&P 500 index in 2024?
On June 24, 2024, S&P Dow Jones Indices added CrowdStrike Holdings to the prestigious S&P 500 index, validating its status as a top, highly profitable global enterprise software leader.
What milestones did CrowdStrike achieve in its post-outage resilience strategy in late 2024?
Following the July 19, 2024 Windows outage, CrowdStrike rolled out its new Content Validator resilience architecture, grew ARR past $3.86 billion, retained over 97% of customer subscriptions, and launched Falcon Flex enterprise licensing.
What are CrowdStrike Holdings' strategic priorities for 2025 and beyond?
CrowdStrike is focused on reaching $10.0 billion in ARR by 2030, expanding Falcon Identity and Falcon Cloud Security, scaling Next-Gen SIEM with Falcon LogScale, advancing generative and agentic AI security with Charlotte AI, and securing global critical infrastructure.
What is CrowdStrike famous for?
Beyond building massive enterprise security software, they gained global mainstream fame in 2016 when the Democratic National Committee (DNC) hired them to investigate a massive cyberattack, where CrowdStrike correctly identified Russian intelligence groups (Fancy Bear) as the culprits.
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