The key facts

  • CrowdStrike is acquiring Fiddler AI (~$400 million) and Dreadnode (~$95 million), with the amounts cited by The Wall Street Journal
  • Fiddler AI will join the Falcon platform as Falcon Observe, while Dreadnode will become part of the Falcon Guardian product
  • The deals come amid a fast-growing market for AI security, where startups are already raising tens of millions of dollars

Two deals amid the AI agent boom

CrowdStrike has announced the acquisition of two startups that expand its products for monitoring, testing and securing AI models and agents: Fiddler AI, a developer of observability software for overseeing AI agents inside companies, and Dreadnode, which automates security testing of AI models, applications and agents before their launch. This is reported by TechCrunch. The deal amounts are cited by The Wall Street Journal: about $400 million for Fiddler AI and about $95 million for Dreadnode, meaning nearly $500 million in total.

How the acquisitions fit into the platform

According to CrowdStrike itself, Fiddler AI will become part of the Falcon platform under the name Falcon Observe: customers will be able to evaluate agents before deployment, understand their actions and monitor them, feeding telemetry into the shared platform. Dreadnode will be integrated into the Falcon Guardian product — a detection and response system that CrowdStrike developed on its own, so that companies can see what agents are doing on their devices; Dreadnode's testing results will flow there as security policy recommendations.

Market context and the companies themselves

TechCrunch notes that the deals come at a time of significant change in cybersecurity: employees are widely using AI tools, automating processes and deploying AI agents, while companies' policies and processes lag behind this adoption. In this fast-growing market , startups and vendors are already raising tens of millions of dollars — based on the premise that existing protective software is insufficient to oversee AI tools and their use. CrowdStrike itself, whose products are widely used by companies and government agencies, is trying to leverage its market presence to capture a share of this segment. According to PitchBook data cited by TechCrunch, Fiddler AI, founded in 2018, has raised a total of about $99 million; Dreadnode, founded in 2023, has raised $14 million.