Exclusive: George Kurtz, CEO of Crowdsstrike, on the acquisition of $ 290 million startup onum and security at the AI ​​age

“What we are doing at Crowstrike is as old as time,” he said Fortune. “It’s good against evil. It is a story of human nature embodied in technology. ”

It is a more urgent and complex battle than ever, because the rise in AI has increased the number of cyber-men and cybercriminals. This makes mergers and acquisitions – a long -standing characteristic of the cybersecurity sector – higher than ever. Certainly, some of the largest offers of 2025 were in Cyber, the acquisition of $ 25 billion of Palo Alto Networks of Cyberark to the acquisition offered by Google of 32 billion dollars of Wiz.

Crowdsstrike, which has become a public in 2019, is also a long -standing buyer and has today announced its acquisition of data observability startup for around 290 million dollars. Crowdsstrike also announced its profits in the second quarter of 2025, beating expectations but offering a more soft than expected income prospect, sending its shares down approximately 4% after negotiation hours.

Kurtz spoke exclusively to Fortune On the ONUM offer and the Crowdsstrike mergers and acquisitions strategy in the future.

“We like to get things in the right stadium,” he said. “When you look at some of these other acquisitions, such as Cyberark, you are talking about a 20 -year -old technological company with a lot of risk of integration. These are big companies, and I have already seen the film. When I was in McAfee, we acquired 21 companies, and I never completely integrated them … So when it happens, we are focused on the customer.

Onum marks one of the first Crowdsstrike offers since the very publicized computer failure of last year, which, according to Kurtz, did not derail its efforts of mergers and acquisitions, but offered a break. The next day, Crowdsstrike established a high bar and refrained from concluding offers, while continuing to speak to businesses, entrepreneurs and VCs, keeping the M&A Pipeline, said Kurtz. Onum’s offer finally met in three months. The startup based in Madrid, which has Dawn Capital and Insight Partners among its donors, was particularly impatient to make hooks for its pipeline detection in real time – the ability to analyze and detect threats or anomalies in data when ingested in a company systems.

“If you are thinking of the data we have, we have started to become the redit of security data for all these AI models,” said Kurtz. “The more data we get, the more we have a moat, the more and more more important and wider problems from the AI ​​point of view.

Partly, this turns to a future filled with AI agents.

“Our goal is to secure all AI agents,” Kurtz said. “Okay, what is an AI agent?” An AI agent is essentially superhuman. It has access to data. He has an identity, although he can be a non -human identity. He has access to a workflow, and he has access to systems that are outside of your own limits … So he has all the exposure to which we protect.

In many ways, Onum is a classic crowdsstrike affair. Since 2017, Crowdsstrike has acquired eight companies, including Humio in 2021 for $ 400 million and flow safety in 2024 for $ 200 million.

“There are companies that are obviously richly valuable,” said Kurtz. “I think that some of these companies do not realize that they are starting to move in to Zombieland: you look at their last -round assessment, and it could be great for them, but it is expensive and it is necessarily usable for many companies, even ours … So you start to hit these big evaluations at a billion dollars with a lot of goods. Value, and this value accumulates to Crowdsstrike shareholders. »»

The goal, in the end, remains the same – security, and fighting the bad guys (who now have more weapons to play).

“With General AI, we democratize destruction,” said Kurtz. “We take a very sophisticated subject known by a relatively few number of people … And now you put all this expertise available to many more people. … The most important thing is that you really compress the delay that the good must be able to face these problems, because the bad actors move so quickly now.”

What is one thing Kurtz is sure, looking towards the future?

“We know there will be a greater need for security tomorrow than today,” he said.