CrowdStrike’s History: 13 Years of B2B Cybersecurity Growth

With its advanced cloud-native platform for protecting endpoints, cloud workloads, identities, and data, CrowdStrike has been keeping its customers safe from adversaries since 2011. For business owners, marketers, and anyone intending to learn from successful business stories, the history of CrowdStrike highlights the power of innovation.

At Business2Community, we’ve consulted a variety of sources to deliver a detailed account of CrowdStrike’s journey from a cybersecurity startup to one of the world’s most valuable IT security providers. Read on to discover its key milestones, controversies, and more.

Who Owns CrowdStrike?

As a public company, CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. is owned by various shareholders. As of March 2024, the largest shareholders were BlackRock Inc. and Vanguard Group Inc., holding 6.99% and 6.96% of the company’s shares, respectively.

George Kurtz, Dmitri Alperovitch, and Gregg Marston founded CrowdStrike in 2011 to “reinvent security” for the cloud era. Recognizing the rapidly evolving nature of cybersecurity problems, the team set up the CrowdStrike HQ in Austin, Texas, and built the CrowdStrike Falcon platform to detect threats and stop breaches.

Between 2012 and 2019, CrowdStrike raised more than $480 million from investors such as Warburg Pincus, Accel, CapitalG, IVP, March Capital, General Atlantic, Rackspace, and Telstra Ventures.

In 2019, the company went public, pushing its valuation to over $11 billion, nearly 4x its valuation from a private funding round in June 2018.

As of July 2024, CrowdStrike’s market cap was $74.2 billion, making it the most valuable IT security company in the world behind Palo Alto Networks.

Who is the CrowdStrike CEO?

The CEO of CrowdStrike is George Kurtz. Kurtz co-founded CrowdStrike in 2011 and has served as President, CEO, and board member since November 2011.

In 1999, Kurtz founded Foundstone, Inc., a leader in vulnerability management. The company was acquired by McAfee for $86 million in 2004. Between 2004 and 2011, he held executive roles at McAfee, Inc., including Executive Vice President and Worldwide Chief Technology Officer.

Following a global computer outage triggered by a faulty CrowdStrike software update in July 2024, Kurtz’s personal net worth plunged by more than $300 million.

For those who don't remember, in 2010, McAfee had a colossal glitch with Windows XP that took down a good part of the internet. The man who was McAfee's CTO at that time is now the CEO of Crowdstrike. The McAfee incident cost the company so much they ended up selling to Intel. pic.twitter.com/DgWid6MSK0

— Anshel Sag (@anshelsag) July 19, 2024

Notably, the global outage was the second major tech disaster that CEO George Kurtz has been involved in. He was the Chief Technology Officer of McAfee in 2010 when a security update from the antivirus firm crashed thousands of computers around the world.

Growth and Development of CrowdStrike

CrowdStrike’s proprietary Falcon platform delivers 27 cloud modules via a SaaS model spanning various security markets, such as:

• Corporate endpoint security
• Security and IT operations
• Managed security services
• Observability
• Cloud security
• Identity protection
• Threat intelligence
• Data protection
• Cybersecurity generative AI

Below, we track 13 years of CrowdStrike history to determine how it became a global leader in endpoint security solutions.

2011-2015: CrowdStrike’s Journey Begins

CrowdStrike was founded in 2011, and according to Network World, it launched its first product, CrowdStrike Falcon, in 2013 to tackle advanced threats to Microsoft and Apple computers. The technology provided endpoint protection, threat intelligence, and attribution.

In 2014, CrowdStrike was credited with exposing the activities of state-sponsored hacking groups across the globe. That year, the Wall Street Journal reported that the company’s efforts helped the US Department of Justice charge five Chinese military hackers involved in economic espionage against US companies.

Other notable achievements included:

• Revealing the activities of Energetic Bear, a Russian Federal Security Service-linked group targeting the global energy sector.
• Providing crucial evidence linking the high-profile Sony Pictures security incident to the North Korean government.
• Helping unmask members of Putter Panda, also known as PLA Unit 61486, a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group.

2016-2018: CrowdStrike Establishes Credibility

Following significant customer and channel growth, CrowdStrike opened its APAC headquarters in 2016. That year, the company committed to industry scrutiny and testing. Based on a series of unbiased third-party assessments, CrowdStrike Falcon was:

• Certified as a legacy AV replacement.
• Named a strong performer in the Forrester Wave 2016 – Endpoint Security.
• Certified with 100% effectiveness and zero false positives against the AMTSO RTTL by SE Labs.
• Validated for PCI, HIPAA, and NIST compliance by Coalfire.

Within the first quarter of 2017, the company was named a “Visionary” in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms, and a global leader in the IDC MarketScape for Endpoint Specialized Threat Analysis and Protection.

In April, Associated Press research supported CrowdStrike’s conclusions that Fancy Bear, a Russian hacking group, was responsible for a cyber attack launched against the US Democratic National Committee in 2016.

For the rest of 2017, the company worked to enhance its incident response, launching malware, antivirus, IT hygiene, and vulnerability management modules.

CrowdStrike established the CrowdStrike Foundation and released its first annual Global Threat Report in the first quarter of 2018. Key module releases also followed, strengthening the company’s processes and services.

In September 2018, CrowdStrike achieved a significant milestone by receiving FedRAMP authorization, a critical requirement for cloud service providers (CSPs) looking to work with the federal government. This authorization enabled CrowdStrike to increase its presence in the federal market and address the growing demand for its advanced endpoint protection platform among government agencies.

Leveraging the advantages of its cloud-based infrastructure, CrowdStrike became the only security company to offer a free trial of its antivirus replacement solution and a warranty of up to $1 million for its EPP Complete solution.

2019-2020: CrowdStrike Goes Public

By 2019, CrowdStrike had doubled its revenue and headcount and was now serving more than 16% of Fortune 1000 companies and 20% of Fortune 500 companies. The rest of the year saw CrowdStrike launch the CrowdStrike Store and become the first company to bring Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) to mobile devices.

Marking a new chapter in its journey, CrowdStrike became a publicly traded company in June that year. With a market capitalization exceeding $11 billion, CrowdStrike had solidified its position as a dominant force in the endpoint protection market.

In 2020, CrowdStrike acquired Preempt Security and focused on expanding its cloud security offerings through the launch of:

• Cloud Workload Protection module
• CrowdStrike Endpoint Recovery Services
• Forensics module
• Cloud Security Posture Management module
• Falcon Recon

2021- 2023: CrowdStrike Expands

Throughout 2021 and 2022, CrowdStrike focused on strategic acquisitions (Humio, SecureCircle) and innovative product launches such as Falcon XDR. The company’s efforts were accompanied by significant achievements, including securing high-level authorizations for government use and top scores in industry evaluations.

The momentum continued in 2023 with the launch of XDR for IoT, Falcon Complete XDR, Charlotte AI, Falcon Foundry, and the acquisition of Bionic.

Notably, CrowdStrike broadened its customer base by introducing Falcon Go. Powered by CrowdStrike’s AI-native Falcon platform, Falcon Go was designed to provide real-time protection to small and medium businesses.

By the end of 2023, CrowdStrike had more than 24,000 customers, including nearly 60% of Fortune 500 companies and more than 50% of the Fortune 1,000.

2024-Present: CrowdStrike Causes a Global Computer Outage

As the first and only modern cybersecurity company to take its message mainstream, CrowdStrike returned to the Superbowl with a new commercial in February 2024. This milestone coincided with the acquisition of Flow Security and the company being named a founding member of the NIST Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute Consortium.

On Friday, July 19, 2024, these achievements were overshadowed by a faulty update that triggered a massive global computer outage. The latest version of its Falcon sensor software, intended to enhance security for CrowdStrike clients, was deployed without adequate quality checks. The resulting “blue screen of death” had a devastating ripple effect, disrupting essential services across various sectors, including air travel, banking, broadcasting, and healthcare.

Throughout the day, interest in CrowdStrike reached peak levels on Google Trends. Global searches for ‘CrowdStrike’ surged past 2 million, while searches for “CrowdStrike stock” exceeded 200,000. CrowdStrike’s share price dropped 11%, to an 11-week low of $304.96, while Microsoft’s share price fell by about 1%. Meanwhile, shares of CrowdStrike’s competitors gained up to 6%.

In the social media frenzy that ensued, experts weighed in on the significant oversight and its implications. Adding fuel to the fire, influential tech billionaire and CEO, Elon Musk took to X posting:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/181433615850505052

While it was unclear which systems he was referring to, the statement was seen as a harbinger of mass migrations to come. Although experts believed the costs and difficulty of switching to CrowdStrike competitors would deter existing customers, there was concern about how this blow to its reputation would affect the company’s ability to attract new clients.

Later that day, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz released an official statement on the company’s website. He apologized for the outage and clarified that it was not a cyber attack but a defect found in a Falcon content update for Windows hosts.

The CEO also emphasized that a fix had been deployed and that the company was working closely with impacted customers and partners. The company also warned of scammers impersonating CrowdStrike through phishing emails, fake calls, and even made-up “fixes” to exploit the confusion.

The next day, Microsoft issued a statement revealing that an estimated 8.5 million devices running on Microsoft Windows operating systems had been affected.

While the incident affected less than 1% of all Windows computers, the company added that the broad economic and societal impacts reflected the widespread use of CrowdStrike among enterprises responsible for many critical services. The tech giant also released its own recovery tool to help repair Windows machines affected by the Crowdstrike update.

On July 22, 2024, CrowdStrike stated, via social media updates, that it was continuing to “focus on restoring all systems as soon as possible” and had deployed a “new technique” to get everyone back online.

Of the approximately 8.5 million Windows devices impacted, a significant number are now back online and operational. Together with our customers, we tested a new technique to accelerate system remediation, and we are in the process of operationalizing an opt-in for this method. We’re making progress by the minute.

Despite quick action on CrowdStrike’s part, recovery was expected to take weeks, leaving the question of who would bear the financial burden of the incident, estimated to be in the billions, unanswered.

CrowdStrike Revenue

CrowdStrike’s revenue has increased every year since its inception. While the company has experienced notable revenue growth (5,745% since 2017), it is yet to reach sustained profitability. In fact, the company incurred net losses each year prior to 2024 and had an accumulated deficit of $1.1 billion as of January 31, 2024.

CrowdStrike Dividend History

Since June 12, 2019, CrowdStrike shares have been listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol CRWD. On its first day of trading, shares surged to $63.50 from the IPO price of $34. A year post-IPO, shares were trading at around $100.

By October 2021, the share price had almost tripled, hitting $280. Between 2022 and 2024, shares hit a slump, dipping as low as $105 in January 2023. After a steady climb throughout 2023, shares hit a new high of around $380 in June 2024. However, following the global tech outage caused by a faulty update of its systems on July 19, 2024, the share price dropped to $304.

CrowdStrike has never declared or paid dividends. According to its 2023 SEC filing, the company does not intend to pay dividends in the foreseeable future and plans to retain all available funds and future earnings for business operations.

History of the CrowdStrike Logo

Since 2011, CrowdStrike has adopted a red, black, and white color scheme to convey its fearless approach to security. The primary logo is a bold, uppercase wordmark paired with either red or white falcon feathers or a distinctive falcon icon.

While the inspiration behind the company’s logo is unknown, the falcon symbolizes superior vision, intelligence, and speed – everything CrowdStrike seeks to embody as a global leader in cybersecurity.

The Future of CrowdStrike

CrowdStrike’s success highlights the power of understanding a market and designing essential enterprise solutions.

By focusing on adversaries or understanding the “who, what, and why” CrowdStrike redefined cybersecurity and established itself as a key player in the industry.

While the company’s innovative contributions to the cybersecurity industry have been impressive, recent events, such as the botched July 2024 security update, have left a massive dent in the company’s reputation.

As CrowdStrike seeks to usher in a new era of artificial intelligence-powered cybersecurity, the company will need to restore public trust. It will also need to put safeguards in place to ensure that it never causes a global tech outage again.

Ultimately, given CrowdStrike’s history of innovation, the company is well-positioned to remain a formidable force in the rapidly evolving cybersecurity landscape.

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