CrowdStrike launches $20 million Falcon Fund to invest in cybersecurity startups

CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company that provides cloud-based endpoint protection, has launched a $20m early stage investment fund. Started in partnership with Accel, Falcon Fund will focus on seed and Series A investments in security startups that are building applications on the CrowdStrike Falcon platform.

To qualify for the funding, startups must have an experienced and hungry team looking to tackle a significant problem that requires performing analytics on endpoint data and/or taking actions on the endpoint. Startups must also have existing interest from other lead investors, especially early stage funding rounds. The startups must also be using  the CrowdStrike Falcon cloud platform and endpoint agent. Interested startup company looking to submit an application can apply directly at CrowdStrike website.

The fund will act as a co-investor and strategic partner alongside lead investors looking for innovative startups solving pressing security and IT challenges for customers. Through the CrowdStrike Store, startups and partners can develop new solutions without the need to build or deploy new endpoint agents or invest in expensive platforms for storage and analytics.

CrowdStrike will include selected vendors in the CrowdStrike Store, the first open cloud-based, single-agent Platform as a Service, or PaaS, for cybersecurity. The CrowdStrike Store offers a unified Security Cloud ecosystem of trusted partners and applications to customers. With Falcon Fund, CrowdStrike will help foster innovation for new startups by accelerating route-to-market and ability to commercialize innovation.

CrowdStrike Falcon’s cloud-native, open API architecture was built to provide a shared security ecosystem where developers and partners could dramatically shape the future of security and IT operations. Through the CrowdStrike Store, startups and partners can develop new solutions without the need to build or deploy new endpoint agents or invest in expensive platforms for storage and analytics. The collection and analysis of machine-level data helps to inform security professionals of threats and create programmable actions within the Falcon ecosystem.

CrowdStrike collects massive amounts of endpoint data related to security and IT operations events, currently at the rate of two trillion per week, and enables startups to leverage the platform’s data and infrastructure to rapidly develop new solutions that they can then seamlessly market and deliver via the CrowdStrike Store. Through the Store, CrowdStrike also offers significant partner resources to qualifying startups that include integration, marketing and go-to-market support.

“With the launch of Falcon Fund, we are investing in the next generation of innovators who are committed to solving today’s most pressing security and IT challenges by leveraging the unique cloud-native architecture and lightweight agent of the Falcon platform. We plan to invest in companies that share our focus on customer success, simplifying security, IT operations and management with our modern, cloud-native platform,” said George Kurtz chief executive officer and co-founder of CrowdStrike.

“Cyberattacks continue to impact enterprises in every industry, and we’re excited to co-invest with CrowdStrike in startups tackling some of the most business-critical issues that organizations face today. Falcon Fund will provide the resources needed to take advantage of the open API-model of the CrowdStrike platform to stop cyber threats and improve IT operations. Through the fund, CrowdStrike and Accel will continue to advance innovation in the cloud and activate the value of threat data at scale,” said Sameer Gandhi, partner at Accel.

Founded in 2011 by Dmitri Alperovitch, George Kurtz, and Gregg Marston, CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity technology firm pioneering cloud delivered next-generation endpoint protection and services. The company is redefining security for the cloud era with an endpoint protection platform built from the ground up to stop breaches.

The CrowdStrike Falcon® platform’s single lightweight-agent architecture leverages cloud-scale artificial intelligence (AI) and offers real-time protection and visibility across the enterprise, preventing attacks on endpoints on or off the network. Powered by the proprietary CrowdStrike Threat Graph®, CrowdStrike Falcon correlates over two trillion endpoint-related events per week in real time from across the globe, fueling one of the world’s most advanced data platforms for security.