CrowdStrike is buying Fiddler AI and Dreadnode to extend its products for monitoring, testing, and covering AI models and agents. The deals come as companies across industries roll out AI agents and models, and as security teams face new pressure from that adoption.
CrowdStrike’s AI security push
The cybersecurity company said Fiddler AI and Dreadnode will add to its efforts around AI agents inside enterprises and the testing of AI systems before they go live. Fiddler AI makes observability software for monitoring AI agents inside enterprises. Dreadnode helps companies automate security testing aimed at finding flaws in AI models, apps, and agents before deployment.
The Wall Street Journal reported the purchase prices as about $400 million for Fiddler AI and about $95 million for Dreadnode. Together, that comes to nearly $500 million.
Why CrowdStrike is making the move
The acquisitions land during a period of major change in cybersecurity. Companies’ policies and processes are moving more slowly than AI adoption within their organizations, while teams and employees experiment with AI tools, automate workflows, build custom apps with vibe-coding, and deploy large numbers of AI agents. That creates headaches for security teams.
CrowdStrike already has broad reach across enterprises and governments, and it is trying to use that position to gain a share of the growing market for securing AI systems. Several startups and cybersecurity vendors have also raised tens of millions of dollars to address these problems, though the common view behind those efforts is that existing security software is not enough to monitor and control AI tools, connectors, or usage.
Where the products fit
CrowdStrike has been building detection and response controls called Falcon Guardian to help companies see and understand what agents are doing on their devices. The new acquisitions expand that work.
Fiddler AI will join CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform as Falcon Observe. There, it is intended to help clients evaluate agents before deployment, understand their actions, and monitor what they do, while feeding telemetry into the broader platform. Dreadnode will be integrated into Falcon Guardian, and its software will feed testing results into security policy recommendations.
The startups’ backgrounds
Fiddler AI was founded in 2018 and has raised about $99 million in total, according to PitchBook. Dreadnode was founded in 2023 and has raised $14 million so far.
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