George Kurtz Bio
George Kurtz (born October 14, 1970) is an American entrepreneur and businessman best known as the co-founder and chief executive officer of CrowdStrike, a cloud-native cybersecurity company. Before launching CrowdStrike, he founded the security firm Foundstone and later served as chief technology officer of McAfee after that company acquired Foundstone in 2004. Kurtz is also the co-author of Hacking Exposed: Network Security Secrets & Solutions, a foundational book in the field of vulnerability assessment.
In addition to his work in cybersecurity, Kurtz is an active investor, a real estate developer in the Southwestern United States, and a licensed race car driver who has competed internationally. Under his leadership, CrowdStrike grew from a startup into a publicly traded company that joined the S&P 500 index in 2024, the fastest cybersecurity firm ever to do so.
Early Life and Background
George Kurtz was born on October 14, 1970, in New Jersey, United States, and grew up in the township of Parsippany-Troy Hills. He attended Parsippany High School, where his early curiosity about computers became a defining part of his childhood. As a fourth-grader, Kurtz began programming simple video games on a Commodore computer, and by high school he was building and running his own bulletin board systems, an early form of online community.
Those early technical experiments laid the foundation for a career in information security. Kurtz went on to attend Seton Hall University, a private school in South Orange, New Jersey, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree with a major in accounting. His formal training in accounting, combined with his self-taught computing skills, would later help him bridge the worlds of finance, risk management, and cybersecurity.
Path to Cybersecurity Leadership
After graduating from Seton Hall University, George Kurtz joined the accounting firm Price Waterhouse as a Certified Public Accountant. In 1993, as the internet became more central to business, he moved into the firm’s newly created security division, where he learned and helped pioneer penetration testing, a method of probing corporate networks for weaknesses before attackers could exploit them. The work placed him at the front line of a brand-new industry.
Kurtz later moved to Ernst & Young, where he continued penetration testing and contributed to the development of internet security protocols and practices that remain part of the cybersecurity field. By the late 1990s, he was ready to build his own company. In 1999, he launched Foundstone, a security products and services firm that competed with the largest names in the business and helped define the emerging field of vulnerability management.
George Kurtz Career
Foundstone and McAfee (1999-2011)
In 1999, George Kurtz launched Foundstone in the United States to offer cybersecurity products and services, a relatively novel pairing at the time. Frustrated by slow and incomplete vulnerability assessment tools, he created the broader category of vulnerability management and helped coin the term. Foundstone also became a pioneer in professional training for penetration testing and vulnerability management, with course material drawn from the 1999 book Hacking Exposed, which Kurtz co-wrote with Stuart McClure and Joel Scambray and which has since sold more than 600,000 copies in over 30 languages.
In August 2004, Kurtz sold Foundstone to McAfee, where he became Senior Vice President and General Manager of Risk Management. He was promoted to Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer in October 2009, a role in which he oversaw the company’s technology strategy and led research into major cyber threats such as Operation Aurora, Night Dragon, and Shady RAT. In 2010, a faulty McAfee antivirus update caused widespread disruption for Windows XP users, an event that foreshadowed a similar incident years later. Kurtz resigned from his executive role at McAfee in October 2011.
Launching CrowdStrike (2012-2018)
In November 2011, after leaving McAfee, George Kurtz joined the private equity firm Warburg Pincus as an entrepreneur-in-residence, where he began shaping the idea for a new kind of cybersecurity company. In February 2012, he co-founded CrowdStrike in Irvine, California, alongside Gregg Marston and Dmitri Alperovitch, with $25 million in initial funding from Warburg Pincus. Kurtz took on the role of CEO from the start.
The following year, CrowdStrike launched its flagship product, Falcon, a cloud-native, intelligence-driven security platform designed to replace traditional on-premise antivirus tools and reduce the performance drag on customer systems. In 2013, the company was named to the MIT Technology Review list of 50 Disruptive Companies. In 2015, the Information Systems Security Association honored Kurtz with its President’s Award for Public Service in recognition of his contributions to the cybersecurity community.
Growth and Public Markets (2019-Present)
By 2019, CrowdStrike had grown into a major global cybersecurity vendor. That year, the company held its initial public offering on the Nasdaq stock exchange, reaching a valuation of about $6.6 billion. A 2020 IDC report named CrowdStrike the fastest-growing vendor in its market, and in 2021, the company was ranked No. 4 on Inc. Magazine’s inaugural list of the 250 Best-Led Companies.
In 2024, CrowdStrike was added to the S&P 500 index, becoming the fastest cybersecurity company ever to join the benchmark. That same year, Cybercrime Magazine named Kurtz its Cybersecurity Person of the Year, and Fortune magazine included him on its list of the 100 Most Powerful People in Business. In July 2024, however, CrowdStrike released a faulty software update that disrupted approximately 8.5 million Microsoft Windows systems worldwide, an event widely described as the largest outage in the history of information technology. Kurtz issued a public apology within hours and committed to a comprehensive internal review. His reported total compensation for 2024 reached $47 million.
Notable Events and Milestones
One of the defining moments of George Kurtz’s career came in 2024, when CrowdStrike’s faulty software update caused a global IT outage that grounded flights, disrupted banks, and affected governments. The incident drew comparisons to a 2010 McAfee update failure, which had also occurred on his watch. Despite the setback, Kurtz’s leadership through the crisis, including rapid public acknowledgment of the issue and a commitment to systemic change, helped reinforce his standing as a central figure in the global cybersecurity industry.
George Kurtz Career Highlights
Beyond software, George Kurtz has built a parallel career as an investor, real estate developer, and motorsport competitor. His business interests extend across multiple industries, while his racing achievements have earned him an FIA Bronze license and class wins at some of the most prestigious endurance events in the world.
Investments and Real Estate
Kurtz has invested in a range of emerging-technology and cybersecurity startups through his venture activity, including Grip Security, Doppel, 1Password, Lovable, and VISO TRUST. In real estate, he has been developing projects across the Southwestern United States since 2019. He owns The Promenade, a 730,000-square-foot shopping center in Scottsdale, Arizona, and in 2023 submitted plans to redevelop the former Cracker Jax site into The Parque, a two-million-square-foot mixed-use campus approved by the Scottsdale City Council. In 2025, his FalconEye Ventures also acquired Scottsdale Quarter, a 755,000-square-foot mixed-use property.
Motorsport Achievements
Kurtz began his racing career in 2016 in the Pirelli World Challenge, later rebranded as GT World Challenge America. He won the GTS Am class in 2017 and earned his first overall GT3 win at Virginia International Raceway in 2020. In 2022, he won ten of sixteen races to claim the SRO3 class title. In 2023, he made his debut at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, winning the LMP2 Pro-Am subclass alongside Colin Braun and James Allen, and won the Pro-Am class at the 24 Hours of Spa. He also won the Asian Le Mans Series championship that winter with Colin Braun and Malthe Jakobsen. Following the 2024 CrowdStrike incident, he withdrew from racing for the season, returning for the 2025 24 Hours of Daytona.
Formula One Involvement
In 2025, Kurtz became a co-owner of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team through a minority investment in an ownership entity controlled by team principal Toto Wolff. As part of the arrangement, he joined the team’s strategic steering committee and serves as a technology adviser, contributing expertise in data security, systems resilience, and large-scale digital infrastructure.
George Kurtz Family
Personal Life
George Kurtz is married to Anna Kurtz, his longtime partner. The couple has two children. Outside of work, Kurtz is known for his interest in motorsport, real estate development, and emerging technology investments.
Industry Recognition
Kurtz has received notable industry recognition throughout his career. In 2015, the Information Systems Security Association honored him with its President’s Award for Public Service, and in 2024, Cybercrime Magazine named him Cybersecurity Person of the Year. He has also been recognized in Fast Company’s inaugural Fast 50 list and named a regional EY Entrepreneur of the Year in 2017 for his work building CrowdStrike.