Amid the surging adoption of AI and agents, the cybersecurity giant’s ‘ecosystem of thousands of partners are looking to us for the answers on how to secure AI at global scale,’ Kurtz said Wednesday.
CrowdStrike is in the “prime position” to continue leading the way on AI security amid the surging adoption of AI and agentic tools across customers and partners, CrowdStrike co-founder and CEO George Kurtz said Wednesday.
Speaking with Wall Street analysts during CrowdStrike’s quarterly call, Kurtz said the company is outpacing rivals when it comes to delivering the advanced protection needed in the fast-moving AI era.
[Related: CrowdStrike Partners: AI Vulnerability Surge Means It’s Time To ‘Pick A Platform’ In Security]
“While competitors may provide AI visibility, only CrowdStrike can detect, block and respond where AI actually runs,” he said, pointing to capabilities such as AI detection and response (AIDR) that has built on CrowdStrike’s core endpoint detection and response (EDR) offering.
Kurtz made the comments as CrowdStrike released financial results for the first quarter of its fiscal 2027, ended April 30, which surpassed Wall Street expectations.
Key highlights of the quarter included momentum for AIDR, which is rapidly becoming a “new growth pillar in our business,” Kurtz noted.
Ending annual recurring revenue for AIDR was up more than 250 percent from the prior quarter sequentially, while fiscal second-quarter pipeline is “already exceeding $50 million,” he said. “We went from zero to this [traction] in under two quarters. In my career, I’ve never seen adoption happen this fast.”
In an exclusive interview with CRN in December, in connection with the launch of Falcon AIDR, CrowdStrike President Mike Sentonas said the offering delivers a massive boost to security around AI prompts and agent interactions.
CrowdStrike Falcon AIDR provides the industry’s most comprehensive approach so far to protecting organizations against some of the key risks caused by surging AI adoption, Sentonas said at the time.
The cybersecurity giant is ultimately seeking to replicate its track record in EDR within the rapidly growing AI attack surface, he said.
“I believe we pioneered modern endpoint security with EDR, and we’re looking to do the same thing in the AI world with AIDR,” Sentonas said. “We want to protect the interaction layer where AI systems reason and they decide and they take action.”
Meanwhile, in an interview with CRN in March, Kurtz said that AIDR is a natural area of expansion for CrowdStrike given how crucial endpoint protection is for securing usage of AI and agentic applications.
“We’re in the best position to be able to do that because we’re already doing that for humans. And now we’re doing that for agents,” he said. “We’ve enhanced and adapted the technology that people depend on [with AIDR].”
The launch of AIDR is evidence that CrowdStrike is making smart moves when it comes to M&A, given that the AIDR module is based on the company’s acquisition of AI security startup Pangea last fall, according to Presidio’s Justin Tibbs.
After the Pangea acquisition was announced, it “immediately made 100-percent sense,” in contrast to some of the other acquisitions that cybersecurity industry vendors have announced in recent years, said Tibbs, vice president for cybersecurity at New York-based Presidio, No. 24 on CRN’s 2025 Solution Provider 500.
And on top of making the right M&A investments, CrowdStrike has excelled at properly integrating the acquired technologies such as Pangea, he said.
All in all, “CrowdStrike, to me, is the fastest and most complete at integrating their M&A and making very slick M&A decisions,” Tibbs said. “It makes the platform feel, for us, like a great accelerator.”
‘World’s AI Security Layer’
The success of AIDR is a key indicator that CrowdStrike and its partners have massive opportunities ahead in enabling secure AI adoption, Kurtz said during the call with analysts Wednesday.
“CrowdStrike is in the prime position to be the world’s AI security layer, with nearly 100,000 businesses, including hundreds of the Fortune 500, already trusting us to secure their organizations,” he said.
And notably, “our ecosystem of thousands of partners are looking to us for the answers on how to secure AI at global scale,” Kurtz said.
Without a doubt, the combination of a fast-moving platform vendor like CrowdStrike and advanced security services will be critical for being able to protect customers in the AI era, executives from top solution provider partners told CRN in May during CrowdStrike’s Americas Partner Symposium 2026.
Beating Expectations
For CrowdStrike’s fiscal first quarter, total revenue grew 26 percent year over year to reach $1.39 billion, beating the Wall Street analyst consensus estimate by $30 million. The company also raised its full fiscal year guidance Wednesday.
The company also reported non-GAAP net income of $1.10 per diluted share, surpassing analyst expectations by 3 cents per diluted share.
Ultimately, Kurtz sought to frame CrowdStrike’s AI security opportunity as potentially turning the company into a core infrastructure provider in the age of widespread AI and agentic usage.
“Think of CrowdStrike as the picks and shovels for the world’s largest technology gold rush of all time,” he said.
