CrowdStrike to Acquire Dreadnode to Advance AI Trust and Deliver Automated AI Security Testing for the Agentic Enterprise

CrowdStrike to Acquire Dreadnode to Advance AI Trust and Deliver Automated AI Security Testing for the Agentic Enterprise

Dreadnode will extend the Falcon platform with automated testing of AI models, applications, and agents to build AI trust – finding and fixing weaknesses before they reach production

Fal.Con Europe 2026--CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: CRWD) today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Dreadnode, a leader in Automated AI Security Testing. Dreadnode will extend the Falcon platform to continuously test every AI model, application, and agent for security weaknesses before deployment.

“Enterprises are deploying AI faster than they can prove it is secure. A model can be jailbroken, an agent can be manipulated, and most organizations have no way to find those flaws until the AI is already in production,” said George Kurtz, CEO and founder of CrowdStrike. “With Dreadnode, CrowdStrike will give every enterprise the power to trust AI and deploy faster, with confidence.”

Building AI Trust: Securing the AI Enterprises Build and Deploy

AI has broken the security testing model, which has traditionally been applied against code that behaves the same way every time. AI models and agents are probabilistic, can be jailbroken or manipulated through prompt injection, and fail in ways conventional testing was not designed to catch. Those weaknesses live inside the model and the agent’s reasoning loop, the layer conventional testing never reaches. Identifying and fixing AI weaknesses needs to happen at the speed AI is being deployed.

With this acquisition, Dreadnode will extend the Falcon platform into the layer where enterprises build and test AI, delivering Automated AI Security Testing capabilities that extend CrowdStrike's leadership in the AI Detection and Response (AIDR) category. Automated AI Security Testing will be generally available in Q4 FY27.

Dreadnode: Automated AI Security Testing on the Falcon Platform

With Dreadnode, CrowdStrike will deliver Automated AI Security Testing on the Falcon platform:

• Automated AI Security Testing: Describe what to test in plain language. Dreadnode runs more than 100 known AI attack strategies, including jailbreaks, prompt injection, and multi-turn and agent-specific attacks, against the models, agent reasoning loops, applications, and MCP servers that power enterprise AI.
• Findings, Remediation, and Framework Mapping: Dreadnode ranks findings by severity, maps them to OWASP Top 10 for LLMs, OWASP Agentic Security (ASI01-ASI10), MITRE ATLAS, and NIST AI RMF, and delivers exportable reports so teams can make go/no-go decisions before deployment.
• Model and Component Scanning: Dreadnode scans AI models, model repositories, and components for vulnerabilities before they reach production.
• Human-in-the-Loop Review: Operators reclassify findings, adjust severity, and document their reasoning, with dashboard metrics recomputing automatically.
• Falcon Guardian and SafeMind Integration: Dreadnode findings will feed Falcon Guardian as policy recommendations, so a weakness found in testing strengthens runtime protection, and Dreadnode testing data will strengthen CrowdStrike's SafeMind models.

Expanding CrowdStrike’s Cyber Superintelligence Lab

The Dreadnode team will join CrowdStrike's Cyber Superintelligence Lab, deepening the company's bench of AI security researchers. Dreadnode’s technology will also sharpen how SafeMind measures the security and cyber capabilities of frontier models, advancing CrowdStrike's research into securing AI systems.

“AI fails in ways traditional testing was never designed to catch, and the people best equipped to find those failures think like attackers. We founded Dreadnode to expose those weaknesses before AI reaches production,” said Brad Palm, CEO of Dreadnode. “As part of CrowdStrike, we will bring Automated AI Security Testing to every enterprise, helping teams confidently find and fix weaknesses.”

Transaction Details

The purchase price is contemplated to be paid predominantly in cash and includes a portion to be delivered in the form of stock subject to vesting conditions. The proposed acquisition is expected to close during CrowdStrike’s fourth quarter of FY27, subject to customary closing conditions.

About CrowdStrike

CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: CRWD), a global cybersecurity leader, has redefined modern security with the world’s most advanced cloud-native platform for protecting critical areas of enterprise risk – endpoints and cloud workloads, identity and data.

Powered by the CrowdStrike Security Cloud and world-class AI, the CrowdStrike Falcon® platform leverages real-time indicators of attack, threat intelligence, evolving adversary tradecraft, and enriched telemetry from across the enterprise to deliver hyper-accurate detections, automated protection and remediation, elite threat hunting, and prioritized observability of vulnerabilities.

Purpose-built in the cloud with a single lightweight-agent architecture, the Falcon platform delivers rapid and scalable deployment, superior protection and performance, reduced complexity, and immediate time-to-value.

CrowdStrike: We stop breaches.

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© 2026 CrowdStrike, Inc. All rights reserved. CrowdStrike and CrowdStrike Falcon are marks owned by CrowdStrike, Inc. and are registered in the United States and other countries. CrowdStrike owns other trademarks and service marks and may use the brands of third parties to identify their products and services.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including statements regarding the benefits of the acquisition to CrowdStrike and its customers, CrowdStrike’s plans to integrate Dreadnode’s technology and operations, and the closing of the acquisition. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, as actual outcomes and results may differ materially from those contemplated as a result of risks and uncertainties. There are a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from statements made in this press release, including the satisfaction of conditions to closing the acquisition, CrowdStrike’s ability to integrate Dreadnode’s technology and operations, and other risks described in the filings CrowdStrike makes with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time, including CrowdStrike’s most recently filed Annual Report on Form 10-K, most recently filed Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, and subsequent filings. All forward-looking statements in this press release are based on information available to CrowdStrike as of the date hereof, and CrowdStrike does not assume any obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date on which they were made.

Media Contact
Jake Schuster
CrowdStrike Corporate Communications
press@crowdstrike.com

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