CrowdStrike to acquire two AI startups for nearly $500m, WSJ says — TechCrunch

Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike has announced plans to acquire two artificial intelligence security startups — Fiddler AI and Dreadnode. The deals are expected to expand CrowdStrike’s capabilities for monitoring, testing and protecting AI models and agents in enterprise systems, TechCrunch reports.

Value of the two deals

According to The Wall Street Journal, CrowdStrike will pay about $400 million for Fiddler AI and approximately $95 million for Dreadnode. Fiddler AI develops software for monitoring AI agents within companies. Dreadnode automates security checks to identify vulnerabilities in AI models, applications and agents before they are launched.

Fiddler AI was founded in 2018 and, according to PitchBook, the startup has raised about $99 million in total investment. Dreadnode, founded in 2023, has raised $14 million.

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Integration with the Falcon platform

Fiddler AI will join CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform under the name Falcon Observe. The tool is intended to help customers assess agents before deployment, understand their actions and track their operation. The data obtained will be sent to the broader platform as telemetry.

Dreadnode will be integrated into the Falcon Guardian product, which CrowdStrike is developing to detect and respond to AI agent activity on company devices. Dreadnode’s test results are expected to be delivered to Falcon Guardian as recommendations for security policies.

TechCrunch notes that companies and their employees are increasingly using AI tools, automating workflows, creating their own applications and deploying agents, while internal security policies and procedures do not always keep pace with such adoption.