The race to secure artificial intelligence has turned into one of the defining battles of 2025, and CrowdStrike (NASDAQ:CRWD) just raised the stakes with a $290 million acquisition of Madrid-based data observability startup Onum.
The deal, announced on Aug. 27., comes as AI-driven cyberattacks multiply, lessening the time defenders have to react, and as CrowdStrike co-founder and CEO George Kurtz told Fortune, the battle is shifting into "good versus evil" fought through technology.
CrowdStrike also reported Q2 earnings last week that topped expectations, though a weaker revenue outlook pushed shares down about 4% in after-hours trading.
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Why Onum Fits Into CrowdStrike's AI-Native Security Strategy
The Onum acquisition came together in three months, marking one of CrowdStrike's earliest transactions since last year's global IT outage. Kurtz told Fortune that the company deliberately paused deals after the disruption but kept its mergers and acquisitions pipeline active through talks with startups, venture capital firms, and entrepreneurs.
Onum, which is backed by Dawn Capital and Insight Partners, builds real-time pipeline detection technology designed to analyze and flag anomalies in data as it flows into enterprise systems. CrowdStrike said the architecture transforms raw telemetry into enriched intelligence within milliseconds, which can speed detection, reduce storage costs, and improve outcomes for customers.
According to CrowdStrike, Onum can process up to five times more events per second than competing systems, cut data retention costs by as much as 50%, and deliver up to 70% faster incident response with 40% less ingestion overhead.
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Kurtz on the Future of AI Agents and the Growing "Moat"
Kurtz described Onum as a natural fit for CrowdStrike's AI-driven security ambitions. "If you think about the data we have, we started becoming the Reddit of security data for all these AI models. The more data we get in, the larger the moat we actually have, and the greater the opportunity we have to solve bigger and broader problems from an AI perspective. That's really driving our vision for AI-native SOC," he told Fortune.
Looking ahead, Kurtz said the company's mission includes protecting emerging AI agents. "Our goal is to secure every AI agent," he said. "An AI agent is basically superhuman. It has access to data. It has an identity, though it might be a non-human identity. It has access to a workflow, and it has access to systems that are outside of your own boundaries… So, it has all of the exposure that we're protecting against."
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The deal highlights CrowdStrike's strategy in avoiding high-priced acquisitions, Fortune says. Since 2017, the company has acquired eight firms, including Humio for $400 million in 2021 and Flow Security in 2024 for a reported $200 million.
Kurtz contrasted this strategy with billion-dollar deals by competitors such as Palo Alto Networks' (NASDAQ:PANW) $25 billion acquisition of CyberArk and Google's proposed $32 billion acquisition of Wiz.
The Bigger Picture: Cybersecurity Demand Will Only Grow
Kurtz gave a grim assessment to Fortune: "With gen AI, we're democratizing destruction." He said generative AI compresses the window for defenders to respond because attackers are moving faster with more accessible tools.
CrowdStrike added that integrating Onum will extend the advantage of its Falcon Next-Gen SIEM platform by fueling AI-driven defenses with smarter, faster, and more cost-effective telemetry.
Kurtz left no ambiguity about the company's outlook: "We know there's going to be a greater need for security tomorrow than there is today."
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