CrowdStrike Buys Pangea for $260M to Secure Enterprise AI Use

CrowdStrike has announced plans to acquire Pangea, a Silicon Valley-based AI security startup, for $260 million, marking its latest step to safeguard enterprise AI adoption at scale.

The deal, revealed at CrowdStrike’s Austin headquarters, will integrate Pangea’s cutting-edge protections into the Falcon platform, enhancing defenses against prompt injection, unauthorized access, and AI misuse.

Pangea, founded in 2021 by Oliver Friedrichs—the founder of SOAR pioneer Phantom Cyber—employs around 40 people and has raised $51 million in funding. Friedrichs previously sold Phantom Cyber to Splunk for $350 million in 2018.

CrowdStrike’s Chief Business Officer Daniel Bernard said the acquisition supports the company’s vision of securing AI with a three-layered approach: infrastructure, software orchestration, and identity. “We created the category of EDR. With Pangea, we will extend detection and response into AI,” Bernard noted.

For enterprises, the biggest risks lie in AI-specific vulnerabilities such as prompt injection, data governance challenges, and malicious agent behaviors. Pangea’s solutions provide visibility and control across infrastructure and identity layers, while also touching orchestration and software integration.

At the infrastructure layer, Pangea strengthens defenses for data centers, GPUs, and cloud systems. At the identity layer, it ensures secure model access, monitors agent behaviors, and blocks risky prompts.

Unlike rivals that focus narrowly on either developers or end users, Pangea addresses both workflows. It secures code-level development processes as well as end-user interactions with AI agents, copilots, and chatbots.

Technically, Pangea will enhance Falcon modules in cloud security, identity protection, and data governance, supported by a redesigned UI for a seamless customer experience.

Bernard emphasized the importance of securing AI agents as digital coworkers, capable of making decisions and scaling output. He touted Pangea’s “99% efficacy against prompt injection at sub-30 milliseconds latency.”

This acquisition follows CrowdStrike’s $290 million purchase of telemetry startup Onum, and coincides with Check Point Software’s $300 million buyout of Lakera—underscoring the race to define the future of AI security.