CrowdStrike CEO: Customers ‘Realize We Have The Best Tech In The Industry’

The cybersecurity giant reported a near-perfect customer retention rate during its latest quarter, showing that customers continue to trust CrowdStrike for its ‘ability to stop breaches,’ CEO George Kurtz said Tuesday.

CrowdStrike maintained a near-perfect customer retention rate during the first full quarter since the July IT outage caused by the cybersecurity vendor’s faulty update, the company reported Tuesday.

During the company’s quarterly call with analysts Tuesday, CrowdStrike Co-founder and CEO George Kurtz said large customers have not switched to other vendors in the wake of the incident, noting that the company had its “best quarter ever” in terms of total revenue. CrowdStrike reported that its total quarterly revenue surpassed $1 billion for the first time during the third quarter of its fiscal 2025, ended Oct. 31.

“I’m encouraged by the conversations that I’m having with our largest customers,” Kurtz said. “[It’s] reflection on the fact that they realize we have the best tech in the industry, and [have] the ability to stop breaches and drive down their overall operational costs from a platform perspective.”

In that regard, Kurtz pointed to the recent Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms, which saw CrowdStrike achieve the highest ranking even after the outage that affected 8.5 million Microsoft Windows devices and disrupted numerous industries.

During the latest quarter, CrowdStrike saw a gross retention rate — the percentage of annual recurring revenue (ARR) retained from the same period a year earlier — of more than 97 percent, the company disclosed.

CrowdStrike also exceeded Wall Street analyst expectations for the quarter, with revenue climbing 29 percent to $1.01 billion, compared to the analyst consensus estimate of $983 million.

Some customers are also continuing to consolidate on the CrowdStrike Falcon platform, Kurtz said during the call. Consolidation is getting a boost from the vendor’s Falcon Flex subscription model, he said, which provides the ability for customers to deploy different modules on the platform as other security products come up for renewal.

CrowdStrike saw “remarkable and accelerating Falcon Flex adoption” during the quarter, closing more than 150 Flex transactions, Kurtz said.

“Flex has ushered in a new tempo of module adoption,” he said.

Partners have been key to driving the strong results from CrowdStrike, according to Kurtz. For instance, “our MSSP business continues to expand at a rapid, triple-digit pace,” he said.

Ultimately, CrowdStrike has found that even in the wake of the outage, “our response and partner-assisted recovery solidified trust and inspired increased Falcon investment,” Kurtz said.