CrowdStrike to buy Palo Alto's Fiddler AI and Dreadnode to watch and test AI agents

CrowdStrike, the Austin, Texas, cybersecurity company, said Tuesday it has agreed to buy two young artificial intelligence security companies:  Fiddler AI of Palo Alto, which makes software that records and explains what AI "agents" do, and Dreadnode, which attacks AI systems on purpose to find weak spots before criminals do.  CrowdStrike announced both deals in releases from its Fal.Con Europe conference in Barcelona and did not disclose what it is paying.

An AI agent is a program built on the same kind of AI model that powers chatbots, but instead of only answering questions it is given a goal and takes steps on its own, using software tools and company logins to get the job done.  CrowdStrike's release says agents are "goal-seeking":  when they hit an obstacle, they find another path.  An agent with valid credentials and approved tools can still make unsupported decisions, ignore instructions or claim work it never finished, the company says, without any hacker involved.

That is the problem Fiddler works on.  "Observability" means recording what a system does so people can later see what happened and why.  Fiddler's software traces each decision, reasoning step and tool an agent used, flags "hallucinations" (confident but wrong output) and behavior that drifts from what was intended, keeps audit trails for regulators and tracks how much the AI costs to run, according to the release.  "Fiddler is the flight recorder for every agent," said George Kurtz, CrowdStrike's CEO and founder.

Dreadnode works on the attack side.  A "red team" is a group authorized to act like an adversary so defenders can see what would happen in a real attack, according to a glossary kept by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the federal standards agency.  Dreadnode automates that for AI.  It runs more than 100 known attack strategies against AI models, apps and agents, including "jailbreaks" that try to talk a model out of its safety rules and "prompt injection," hidden instructions slipped into text an AI reads.  It ranks what it finds against published checklists such as the OWASP Top 10 for large language models, from the Open Worldwide Application Security Project, a nonprofit.

CrowdStrike says ordinary software testing was built for code that "behaves the same way every time."  AI models are probabilistic, meaning the same request can get different answers, so their weaknesses sit inside the model and the agent's reasoning, a layer conventional testing never reaches, the Dreadnode release says.  CrowdStrike is best known for its Falcon software, which runs on company computers, servers and cloud accounts to detect and stop attacks; its small-business version is sold as "AI-powered antivirus."  The two new products would watch and test the AI agents themselves rather than the machines they run on.

Fiddler was founded in 2018 and had raised $100 million by January 2026, when it announced a $30 million Series C round led by RPS Ventures, according to its own announcement.  Its newsroom lists a $10.2 million Series A in 2019, under the earlier name Fiddler Labs, and a $32 million Series B in 2021.  Its founders are CEO Krishna Gade, who previously worked at Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Microsoft, and Chief Operating Officer Amit Paka, its website says.  It began by explaining why machine-learning models made their decisions, then added monitoring and later tools to control agents.  It lists offices in Palo Alto and India.  Its head count is not disclosed.

"We started Fiddler to help enterprises answer a fundamental question:  can I trust what my AI agents are doing?" Gade said in the release.

Dreadnode was founded in 2023 by Will Pearce, who built AI red teams at Microsoft and Nvidia, and Nick Landers, now its chief technology officer, according to the company.  It raised a $14 million Series A in February 2025 led by Decibel; other investors listed on its site include In-Q-Tel, Next Frontier Capital and Sands Capital.  It describes its team as attackers and researchers "with military and government roots," and its privacy policy gives a mailing address in Bozeman, Mont.  It said in early 2025 that it had added 15 employees the year before; its current size is not disclosed.  "We founded Dreadnode to expose those weaknesses before AI reaches production," CEO Brad Palm said in the release.

CrowdStrike will sell Fiddler's technology as Falcon Observe and Dreadnode's as Automated AI Security Testing, both expected to be generally available in the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2027.  It pairs Fiddler with Falcon Guardian, AI-protection features it announced the same day:  "Guardian secures agents from attack and misuse; Fiddler validates they behaved as intended," the release says.  Weaknesses Dreadnode finds will become protection rules in Guardian, and Dreadnode's team will join CrowdStrike's Cyber Superintelligence Lab, its AI research group.  "Enterprises are deploying AI faster than they can prove it is secure," Kurtz said.

CrowdStrike was founded in 2011 and has been led since then by Kurtz, a former McAfee executive, according to its annual report.  It had 10,698 full-time employees and about $4.81 billion in revenue in the fiscal year that ended Jan. 31, 2026.  The deals continue a buying streak:  in September 2025 it bought Onum, a data company, and Pangea, an AI security startup, for about $212 million in cash, the report says.

Both prices will be paid mostly in cash, with some CrowdStrike stock that vests over time, meaning recipients earn it by meeting conditions such as staying on.  Because Fiddler and Dreadnode are private, there is no public share price or premium.  Both deals are expected to close in CrowdStrike's fiscal fourth quarter, which runs from Nov. 1, 2026, through Jan. 31, 2027, based on the fiscal calendar in its filings, subject to customary closing conditions.  The releases do not say whether any regulatory or shareholder approvals are needed.  Layoffs and plans for Fiddler's Palo Alto office were not disclosed.

Source: CrowdStrike release on Fiddler, Nov. 3, 2026; CrowdStrike release on Dreadnode, Nov. 3, 2026; CrowdStrike Form 10-K, fiscal 2026; CrowdStrike Form 10-Q, quarter ended July 31, 2026; Fiddler AI About page; Fiddler Series C announcement, Jan. 27, 2026; Fiddler newsroom; Fiddler careers page; Dreadnode About page; Dreadnode Series A announcement, Feb. 25, 2025; Dreadnode privacy policy; NIST glossary: red team.