'The threat landscape is moving so quickly': CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz warns AI is raising the stakes in cybersecurity – and the firm is poised to capitalize on ‘the largest market opportunity in our history’

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz has issued a warning over skyrocketing cybersecurity risks and rising threats created by recent AI advances.

Speaking on CNBC’s ‘Mad Money’ show, the CrowdStrike chief claimed current cybersecurity solutions aren’t equipped to contend with increasingly sophisticated threat groups and AI-related risks.

“A lot of companies are recognizing that legacy technology, and technology that they get for free, is not good enough,” he told host Jim Cramer. Notably, this warning applies to enterprises of all sizes regardless of their level of expertise, budgets, and security capabilities.

“Most companies have some level of gaps,” he commented, per CNBC reports. “The challenge that you have - even if companies are sophisticated and spending a lot - is the threat landscape is moving so quickly.”

The warning from Kurtz comes amidst growing cybersecurity concerns globally, with enterprises facing an increasingly perilous threat landscape. Highly aggressive ransomware groups and sophisticated state-sponsored threat actors continue to pose a huge threat to organisations and critical infrastructure.

Earlier this week, The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) revealed that over 100 water systems were targeted by threat groups in July.

That advisory came less than 24 hours after the FBI revealed a host of federal agencies including the Justice Department and Federal Reserve were breached by a Chinese-backed hacker group.

Kurtz noted that threat groups are evolving rapidly and adapting techniques, which is creating huge challenges for cyber defenders.

“You really have to have the technologies with the right level of expertise to be able to combat these adversaries,” he said. “They’re moving so quickly, their techniques change so dramatically.”

AI security in the spotlight

AI security risks are also adding a new level of complexity to the global threat landscape, Kurtz told CNBC.

A series of powerful new cyber-focused AI models have been announced by leading developers in recent months, including Anthropic’s Claude Mythos.

When Anthropic unveiled the model earlier this year, it rolled out as part of a gated release program due to concerns that it could be used for nefarious purposes.

Since then, a series of high profile incidents involving Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic AI tools have thrust AI safety into the spotlight.

OpenAI revealed in mid-July that AI agents escaped a sandbox test environment and breached a Hugging Face production database. OpenAI’s admission was followed in quick succession by Anthropic and Meta, who both confirmed similar incidents.

Kurtz told Cramer that the ability for AI agents to “swarm and find vulnerabilities and exploit those” raises the stakes for enterprises and security teams. The advent of AI agents is also creating risks elsewhere and creating blind spots for enterprises, as ITPro reported in July.

CrowdStrike’s field CTO for Europe, Zeki Turedi, told ITPro that the deep access these agents have to enterprise IT estates could further exacerbate ‘living off the land’ techniques used by hackers to infiltrate networks.

Capitalizing on the AI boom

CrowdStrike is one of a number of leading cybersecurity vendors capitalizing on the AI security boom in 2026. On 26 August, the company published its Q2 financial results, which Kurtz described as “the best quarter in CrowdStrike’s history”.

Indeed, the company reported total revenue of $1.47 billion for the quarter, marking a 26% increase compared to Q1. Annual recurring revenue (ARR) also reached $333 million, with growth surging 51% year-over-year.

In a statement, Kurtz specifically highlighted adoption rates of Falcon Flex as a key contributor to recent growth. Falcon Flex is a subscription-based licensing scheme for its Falcon cybersecurity platform.

"Delivering record Falcon Flex results, record net new ARR, and accelerating growth—the Falcon is soaring,” he said.

“The Mythos moment translated into mass-market acceptance that AI adoption needs security, and that's CrowdStrike. Every enterprise will run on AI, and securing it is the largest market opportunity in our history."

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