Exclusive: CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz on $290 million acquisition of startup Onum and security in the AI age

“What we conclude at CrowdStrike is as extinct as time,” he educated Fortune. “It’s elegant versus substandard. It’s a human nature sage embodied in technology.”

It’s a strive against that’s more urgent and intricate than ever, as the upward thrust of AI has ballooned the assortment of cyber threats and cyber criminals. This makes M&A—a longstanding characteristic of the cybersecurity sector—more high-stakes than ever. To be bolt that, about a of the finest gives of 2025 were in cyber, from Palo Alto Networks’ $25 billion acquisition of CyberArk to Google’s proposed $32 billion acquisition of Wiz. 

CrowdStrike, which went public in 2019, is also a longtime acquirer, and on the present time presented its acquisition of details observability startup Onum for about $290 million. CrowdStrike on the present time also presented its Q2 2025 earnings, beating expectations but offering a softer-than-anticipated income outlook sending its shares down roughly 4% in after hours trading. 

Kurtz exclusively spoke to Fortune in regards to the Onum deal and CrowdStrike’s M&A methodology going forward.

“We love to acquire issues on the accurate stage,” he said. “Whenever you survey at a majority of those varied acquisitions, love CyberArk, you’re speaking about a 20-twelve months-extinct technology company with loads of integration possibility. These are substantial companies, and I’ve seen the movie before. After I was at McAfee, we acquired 21 companies, and by no methodology reasonably got them integrated… So, when it comes all the vogue down to it, we’re maniacally centered on the shopper journey, on making certain we’re disciplined ample to acquire these items integrated. We now dangle got a gargantuan song file of doing that.”

Onum marks one amongst CrowdStrike’s early gives since perfect twelve months’s great-publicized IT outage, which Kurtz says didn’t derail its M&A efforts, but equipped a stop. Within the aftermath, CrowdStrike establish a high bar and refrained from closing any gives, while persevering with to focus on with companies, entrepreneurs, and VCs, retaining the M&A pipeline filled with life, said Kurtz. The Onum deal finally got right here together in three months. The Madrid-essentially based fully mostly startup, which counts Morning time Capital and Perception Partners amongst its VC backers, was especially compelling to CrowdStrike for its proper-time pipeline detection—the ability to investigate and detect threats or anomalies in knowledge because it’s miles being ingested into a company’s systems. 

“Whenever you mediate in regards to the records we now dangle got, we began changing into the Reddit of security knowledge for all these AI items,” said Kurtz. “The more knowledge we obtain in, the easier the moat we even dangle, and the easier the different we now dangle got to resolve better and broader complications from an AI standpoint. That’s in truth driving our vision for AI-native SOC [security operations center]. It’s a pure extension.”

In fragment, right here’s taking a survey in direction of a future stuffed with AI brokers. 

“Our arrangement is to get every AI agent,” said Kurtz. “Ok, what’s an AI agent? An AI agent is fully superhuman. It has obtain accurate of entry to to knowledge. It has an identity, though it would perhaps maybe be a non-human identity. It has obtain accurate of entry to to a workflow, and it has obtain accurate of entry to to systems which will be outdoors of your possess boundaries… So, it has all the publicity that we’re retaining against. 

In loads of programs, Onum is a classic CrowdStrike deal. Since 2017, CrowdStrike has acquired eight companies, in conjunction with Humio in 2021 for $400 million and Drift Security in 2024 for a reported $200 million. 

“There are some companies which will be clearly richly-valued,” Kurtz said. “I mediate a majority of those companies don’t have in mind the truth that they are starting up to switch into zombieland: You survey at their perfect spherical valuation, and it would perhaps maybe be gargantuan for them, but it’s pricey and it’s essentially actionable for loads of companies, even ours… So, you delivery to hit these substantial, multi-billion buck valuations with now not loads of ARR, quite speaking, and your pool of patrons dramatically shrinks. That’s why we love to acquire them within the sweet spot of where we can add fee, and that fee accrues to CrowdStrike’s shareholders.”

The arrangement, within the cease, stays the same—security, and combating the defective guys (who now dangle more weapons to play with). 

“With gen AI, we’re democratizing destruction,” said Kurtz. “We’re taking a in truth refined topic acknowledged by a quite few assortment of people … and now you’re making all that expertise accessible to many more people. … The finest notify is that you just’re in truth compressing the timeframe that the elegant guys dangle to be succesful of address these complications, since the defective actors are engaging so great sooner now.” 

What’s one notify Kurtz is bolt of, taking a survey to the lengthy toddle? 

“We know there’s going to be a better want for security the next day than there would possibly be on the present time,” he said.