Founder Profile
George Kurtz
Last reviewed: October 2026 · By Swet Parvadiya
Who is George Kurtz?
George Kurtz is a founder of CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc., which was founded in 2011 with Dmitri Alperovitch and Gregg Marston.
- Company founded
- CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc.
- Founded
- 2011
- Co-founders
- Dmitri Alperovitch and Gregg Marston
Background
Kurtz co-authored "Hacking Exposed", founded security consultancy Foundstone (acquired by McAfee in 2004), and then served as McAfee's worldwide chief technology officer.
Founding Story
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.