CrowdStrike

Founder‑CEO George Kurtz and CFO Burt Podbere are widely respected operators who scaled the company and navigated a major incident while maintaining customer retention and platform momentum. Leadership is pushing an ambitious agentic AI roadmap and landing blue‑chip partnerships.

That said, recent reports show Kurtz significantly reduced his voting power through gifts and recurring share sales for tax withholding, slightly lowering the founder‑owner alignment signal. The 5 percent workforce reduction in 2025 was framed as AI efficiency but drew some external criticism.

Net view: experienced, execution‑oriented team with high credibility, balanced by governance optics.