Cyber security company CrowdStrike has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Fiddler AI, a company that monitors AI agents and explains why they take the actions they do. The deal was announced on 3 November at CrowdStrike's Fal.Con Europe 2026 event in Barcelona. CrowdStrike did not state a price. On the same day it also announced a plan to buy Dreadnode, which tests AI models and agents for security weaknesses.
The deal
CrowdStrike said the purchase price will be paid mostly in cash, with a portion paid in CrowdStrike stock that only vests under set conditions. The company has not disclosed the total value.
Fiddler's technology will be sold inside CrowdStrike's Falcon security platform under a new name, Falcon Observe.
What the company does
Chief executive Krishna Gade wrote that he and his co-founder Amit started Fiddler eight years ago. It started with tools that explain and monitor machine learning models, and later added evaluations, observability for AI agents and runtime guardrails. Its software can follow an agent's instructions, the tools it called and the results it got, and judge whether the agent kept to the job it was given.
Fiddler says its Centor evaluator models check answers for faithfulness, sensitive information and safety, at a fraction of the cost of running a large language model to do the same check.
"Fiddler is the flight recorder for every agent: the observability to explain exactly what an agent did and why."George Kurtz, CEO and founder, CrowdStrike
How it fits
CrowdStrike already treats AI agents as identities linked to the person behind them, controls what they can access based on risk, and protects them while they run. Fiddler adds three steps around that:
- Before launch: testing an agent before a company puts it to work.
- In production: keeping a continuous record of how the agent behaves.
- Afterwards: explaining the decisions it made, for example when a board or regulator asks.
CrowdStrike also announced new Falcon Guardian features on 3 November, including an "AI Kill Switch" to shut down rogue agents. It describes the split this way: Guardian protects agents from attack and misuse, while Fiddler checks that they behaved as intended.
"We started Fiddler to help enterprises answer a fundamental question: can I trust what my AI agents are doing?"Krishna Gade, CEO and co-founder, Fiddler
Timing and conditions
The acquisition is expected to close in CrowdStrike's fourth quarter of fiscal year 2027, subject to customary closing conditions. Falcon Observe is planned to be generally available in the same quarter.
Background
The Dreadnode deal, announced separately on the same day, adds automated testing of AI models, applications and agents to the Falcon platform, so weaknesses can be found and fixed before they reach production. Both deals are listed in the AI Money tracker. Earlier this week, Salesforce agreed to buy AI voice agent maker Cresta.
Announced by CrowdStrike in its press release: read the announcement
