CrowdStrike in the AI stack

The business and what the filings show

CrowdStrike sells endpoint, cloud and identity security on its Falcon platform, delivered as a subscription. Over its latest four quarters it reported $5.4B of revenue, +24% on the year before, at a 75% gross margin and a −2% operating margin; free cash flow was $1.6B, 30% of revenue, and remaining performance obligations $10.7B.

AI enters CrowdStrike’s business from both directions. It uses AI to detect and respond to attacks, including Charlotte AI, which its 10-K describes as making autonomous security decisions within guardrails customers set. And AI raises demand for security, because attackers use it too and because AI agents and models are new things inside a company that need protecting.

Security is one of the few software categories where AI may add work rather than remove it: more AI agents with access to company systems means more identities and actions to watch. The question is whether CrowdStrike captures that spending as customers consolidate vendors, against Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft and others selling the same idea.

How AI shows up in the numbers

AI shows up at CrowdStrike as models inside its detection and response products, as agentic features that automate security analysts’ work, and as demand for securing AI systems. Its filings do not separate AI revenue, so the read is growth against the layer and how often its earnings releases quantify AI results.

For scale, CrowdStrike’s revenue over the latest four quarters equals 1% of the $566B the five largest buyers spent on capital projects over their latest four quarters. Their capex rose +81% on the year before, while CrowdStrike’s revenue grew +24%: slower than the spending, so it is capturing a smaller share of each new capex dollar, or more of its business sits outside the build-out.

How it talks about AI

In its latest earnings release, furnished to the SEC on August 26, 2026, CrowdStrike mentioned AI 15 times in 1,414 words of narrative text, about 10.6 mentions per 1,000 words. Of its 9 sentences about AI, 0 included a number: a revenue figure, a growth rate, a customer count or another measurable result. Across the 8 releases we read, back to March 4, 2025, AI mentions per 1,000 words went from 3.6 to 10.6.

Specific claims are easier to check against the numbers than general enthusiasm, which is why the share of AI sentences that carry a figure is worth watching alongside how often AI is mentioned. The sentences below are quoted from the release as published, after removing safe-harbor text and company boilerplate.

• “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.”

Source: earnings release (Form 8-K, Exhibit 99.1), August 26, 2026.

The trend in the numbers

Since the start of 2023, CrowdStrike’s largest quarter by revenue was Q2 2026 at $1.5B, and its highest gross margin was 76% in Q4 2025. The latest quarter set the revenue record for the period.

Quarter by quarter, CrowdStrike’s revenue grew +22% in Q3 2025, +23% in Q4 2025, +26% in Q1 2026, +26% in Q2 2026 on the same quarter a year earlier. Growth has been accelerating.

Gross margin in the latest quarter was 75%, against 74% a year earlier, little changed. Operating margin moved from −9% to −2% over the same span. Over the latest four quarters it turned 37% of its revenue into operating cash flow and spent 8% of revenue on capital projects, against 6% a year earlier.

Where it sits in the stack

CrowdStrike sits in the software and applications layer of the AI stack. It sits at the top of the stack, where revenue from end customers has to come from; its own spending flows to AI clouds.

Among the 27 companies in this layer on our map, it ranks number 13 by revenue and number 11 of 27 by revenue growth. Its gross margin of 75% compares with 78% for the layer as a whole, close to the layer average. The full layer analysis is on the software page.

Latest four quarters for 10-Q filers; latest fiscal year for 20-F filers. Companies under $100 million of revenue are left out.

Against the 27 US-listed companies in its layer, CrowdStrike grew +24% over the latest year versus +19% for the layer combined, and converted 30% of revenue into free cash flow versus 33% for the layer. It is growing roughly in line with its layer.

What has to go right, and what could go wrong

What has to go right. AI has to add to the amount of security work companies need, and CrowdStrike has to be one of the platforms customers consolidate onto, so AI raises its revenue per customer.

What could go wrong. If Microsoft and other platform vendors bundle AI security into what customers already buy, or AI makes detection a commodity, CrowdStrike could see pricing pressure despite rising demand for security.

These describe the conditions the business depends on, as the filings show them. They are not a view on the stock.

Through the lens of Investing in AI

Rob May’s book offers six mental models for telling AI moats from traps. The one most useful for CrowdStrike’s layer is “AI challenges traditional SaaS assumptions”: Per-seat pricing, zero marginal cost, smooth ARR curves, and automatic land-and-expand break down when software does work on your behalf. The mistake is not using SaaS instincts. It is using them automatically.

The question it asks of any company is: What work is this product actually doing, and how does pricing map to it? Applied to CrowdStrike, the filings on this page are the place to start: the margin trend shows whether it holds scarce value or passes it through, the customer and financing disclosures show who it depends on, and the commitments show what it has promised before the revenue arrives.

Customers and concentration

US companies must disclose any customer that accounts for 10% or more of revenue, and foreign filers usually describe their largest customers. Concentration matters because a company’s growth is only as durable as the handful of buyers behind it, and in the AI stack those buyers are often the same few companies.

• “There were no channel partners or direct customers who represented 10% or more of the Company’s total revenue during the fiscal years ended January 31, 2026, January 31, 2025, and January 31, 2024.” 10-K, March 5, 2026

Commitments and backlog

• Backlog. CrowdStrike reports $10.7B of remaining performance obligations, 2.0 times its revenue over the latest four quarters: contracted revenue not yet earned.
• Purchase commitments. $118M of unconditional purchase obligations as of July 31, 2026 (10-Q): what it has contracted to buy from its own suppliers.

What to watch

CrowdStrike’s next quarterly report will cover the quarter ending around October 30, 2026. Large companies must file a 10-Q within 40 days of a quarter’s end and a 10-K within 60 days of the fiscal year’s end, so the new figures should arrive by about December 29, 2026 at the latest. This page, the layer pages and the next quarterly report all update from that filing.

• Revenue growth against the layer, and whether new AI security products lift it.
• Free cash flow margin against operating margin: the gap is mostly stock-based compensation.
• Remaining performance obligations, a read on multi-year commitments to the platform.
• Its place in the next quarterly AI Stack Report, which updates every company on the map from the new filings.

Figures from CrowdStrike’s SEC filings, latest period ended July 31, 2026. Other companies: all company pages.