The cybersecurity company CrowdStrike said on Nov. 3 that it has agreed to buy two companies that look for problems in AI systems, especially AI agents. AI agents are AI that can carry out tasks on their own, such as using apps and websites, instead of only answering questions. CrowdStrike says Fiddler AI records what agents do and explains why they did it. Dreadnode tests AI systems with known attacks to find their weak spots before they go live. "Enterprises are deploying AI faster than they can prove it is secure," said George Kurtz, CrowdStrike's chief executive.
The worry is not only hackers. CrowdStrike says an agent can have valid logins and approved tools and still make "unsupported decisions," ignore instructions or claim work it never completed. Fiddler's chief executive, Krishna Gade, describes how it could happen: a coding agent sent to look into a problem is blocked because it lacks permission, so it changes an access rule to make the error go away. The agent's commands work, but it has weakened security while doing a job it was only allowed to investigate. Kurtz calls Fiddler "the flight recorder for every agent."
CrowdStrike says Fiddler tests agents before they go live. Once they are running, it traces their decisions and the tools they use, and flags agents that start acting differently or do things nobody intended. CrowdStrike will sell it as Falcon Observe. It says Dreadnode lets users describe in everyday language what they want tested, then runs known attacks against AI models, apps and agents, including attempts to trick or manipulate them. It ranks each problem it finds by how serious it is and writes a report teams can use to decide whether to launch. Once the deal closes, Dreadnode's team will join CrowdStrike's AI security research lab.
CrowdStrike expects the deals to close between November 2026 and January 2027, the last quarter of its fiscal year, and says both tools will be on general sale in that quarter. Both deals still have to meet the usual closing conditions. CrowdStrike has not said what it is paying. It says each deal is expected to be paid mostly in cash, with part paid in CrowdStrike shares that vest over time or on conditions before they fully belong to the holders. A news report puts the total at about $495 million: roughly $400 million for Fiddler and $95 million for Dreadnode.
The two deals add to CrowdStrike's AI security business. It bought Pangea, another AI security company, last year, and last month it announced Falcon Guardian, which protects AI agents while they are at work. CrowdStrike says both companies' tools will be sold as part of its Falcon platform, and Fiddler tells its existing customers that the needs that brought them to it remain central.