Cybersecurity leader CrowdStrike is acquiring two AI security companies to more broadly monitor, test, and secure AI models and agents. As companies across industries begin deploying AI agents and models at scale, this market is gaining momentum.
CrowdStrike announced it will acquire Fiddler AI and Dreadnode. Fiddler AI provides observability software to monitor AI agents within enterprises, while Dreadnode helps companies automate security testing to identify vulnerabilities in AI models, applications, and agents before they go live.
According to The Wall Street Journal, CrowdStrike paid approximately $400 million for Fiddler AI and approximately $95 million for Dreadnode.
These transactions are occurring amid significant shifts in the cybersecurity landscape, particularly as internal corporate policies and processes struggle to keep pace with AI adoption. Teams and individual employees are experimenting with AI tools, automating workflows, developing custom applications using vibe-coding, and deploying numerous AI agents to perform tasks on their behalf—undoubtedly creating challenges for security teams.
CrowdStrike’s products are widely used by enterprises and governments, and the company is clearly attempting to leverage its existing scale and influence to capture market share in this rapidly growing sector. Of course, it is not the only company doing so. Several startups and cybersecurity vendors have previously raised tens of millions of dollars in funding to address these issues, though most of these solutions are based on the assumption that existing security software is insufficient to monitor and control AI tools, connectors, or usage.
The company has also been developing a detection and response control called Falcon Guardian, which helps businesses monitor and understand agent behavior on devices, and these acquisitions appear to further enrich its product lineup.
Fiddler AI will be integrated into CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform as Falcon Observe. It is designed to help customers assess agents before deployment, understand their behavior, and monitor their activities, while feeding this information as telemetry into the broader platform. Dreadnode will be integrated into the Falcon Guardian product, with its software providing test results to inform security policy recommendations.
Fiddler AI was founded in 2018 and has raised approximately $99 million to date, according to PitchBook data. Dreadnode, founded in 2023, has raised $14 million to date.