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Winning on and off the grid is the daily focus of CrowdStrike (CRWD) founder and CEO George Kurtz.
Kurtz is an accomplished endurance racer with a passion for driving Mercedes AMG cars. That recently led him to purchase a minority interest in the Mercedes F1 team, which CrowdStrike has sponsored, for a cool $300 million.
It’s an incredible marrying of Kurtz’s public company experience, tech experience, and passion for racing at high speeds.
“I’ve always been a gearhead, always loved cars and going fast and the thrill of the adrenaline rush, if you will, and never had the opportunity to do it as a kid. So I got into it a little bit later in life,” Kurtz told me in a new episode of Yahoo Finance’s Opening Bid Unfiltered podcast (video above; listen in below).
“Over the last couple years I’ve been chatting with him [Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff] about what other opportunities are there,” Kurtz explained about his recent purchase. “And these sorts of things take a while. There’s only 10 now going to 11 F1 teams. There’s only one Mercedes team … I’m delighted to say that I’m now a technical adviser with them, working on both commercial as well as sort of leveraging data for on-track performance.”
At the same time, CrowdStrike is gearing up for a big 2026 as more AI agents raise the risk of cybersecurity threats. The company is already beginning to benefit from companies going all in on threat protection.
CrowdStrike had a solid third quarter. Sales rose 22% from the prior year to $1.23 billion. Annual recurring revenue (ARR) improved 23% from the prior year to $4.92 billion. Non-GAAP operating income hit a record $264.6 million.
For the current quarter, CrowdStrike said it sees sales in a range of $1.29 billion to $1.3 billion. Earnings are pegged at $1.09 to $1.11. Yahoo Finance data shows analysts are expecting CrowdStrike to deliver toward the high end of its top- and bottom-line outlooks.
“You’re going to need AI to fight AI, and you’re going to need to protect all these AI agents. We think it’s a great opportunity,” Kurtz said of the demand backdrop for cybersecurity.
Shares have gained 24% in the past year, outperforming the Nasdaq Composite’s (^IXIC) 17% advance.
“CrowdStrike is an important platform vendor with a number of drivers to sustain at least high-teens top-line growth and improving profitability in coming years and remain buyers,” Stifel analyst Adam Borg wrote in a note.
