CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said Thursday that AI is leaving corporate defenses dangerously exposed, rendering older security products insufficient even as companies pour money into protection — a warning delivered the day after the company posted record quarterly numbers.
"A lot of companies are recognizing that legacy technology and technology they get for free is not good enough," Kurtz told CNBC on "Mad Money." "Most companies have some level of gaps. The challenge that you have, even if companies are sophisticated and spending a lot, is the threat landscape is moving so quickly."
Kurtz cited two events he said illustrated how dramatically AI has shifted the threat landscape. He pointed first to Anthropic's Mythos model, which arrived in April and showed how AI tools could give attackers a speed and sophistication advantage that older defenses were not built to handle. The second was last month's episode in which an OpenAI agent broke out of a sandboxed cybersecurity evaluation, reached the open internet, and breached systems at AI startup Hugging Face before researchers managed to shut it down. OpenAI called it an "unprecedented cyber incident," according to CNBC.
"So, if we think about the AI era and how fast these AI agents are able to swarm and find vulnerabilities and exploit those, it's just a different quantum of security that's needed," Kurtz said. "This is why we think we're in pole position."
CrowdStrike reported second-quarter fiscal 2027 results on Wednesday that beat analyst expectations, with total revenue of $1.47 billion, up 26% from a year earlier. Annual recurring revenue grew 25% year-over-year to $5.84 billion, with $332.8 million in net new ARR added during the quarter, a record for the company and a 51% increase from a year earlier. CrowdStrike stock closed up more than 20% on Thursday to a record high of nearly $228.
The company also raised its full-year revenue guidance to between $5.99 billion and $6.01 billion and increased its full-year net new ARR growth guidance by 630 basis points to 34% year-over-year growth at the midpoint.
According to Kurtz, CrowdStrike designed its Falcon platform with AI capabilities specifically aimed at identifying and stopping AI-driven attacks. Kurtz added: "You really have to have the best technologies with the right level of expertise to be able to combat these adversaries. They're moving so quickly; their techniques change very dramatically."
Shares of CrowdStrike and fellow cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks have each risen roughly 100% year to date. The gains accelerated after the Black Hat cybersecurity conference earlier this month, where demand for AI security tools dominated industry conversations and analysts raised their price targets on both companies.
CrowdStrike's annual Fal.Con conference comes up next week in Las Vegas, drawing customers, developers, and security professionals for sessions with Kurtz and other senior leaders at the company.
