CrowdStrike (CRWD) Stock on 6 December 2025: Earnings Beat, AI Deals and What Wall Street Expects Next

CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: CRWD) remains one of the most closely watched cybersecurity and AI stocks going into 2026. As of 6 December 2025, CrowdStrike stock is trading around $512 per share, giving the company a market value of roughly $130 billion. ^[1]

After rebounding strongly from the 2024 global outage incident, CRWD has delivered a powerful multi‑year rally — about 345% over the past three years and a high‑40s percentage gain in 2025 alone. ^[2] With fresh Q3 FY2026 results, major AI partnerships and a wave of analyst upgrades, CrowdStrike is firmly back in the spotlight for growth investors and traders searching for the next leg of the cybersecurity/AI trade.

This article rounds up the latest CrowdStrike stock news, forecasts and analysis as of 6 December 2025, focusing on:

Q3 FY2026 earnings and guidance
New AI, cloud and partnership announcements
Analyst ratings, price targets and valuation debates
Key risks and what to watch next for CRWD stock

1. CrowdStrike stock today: powerful run, premium valuation

CrowdStrike shares closed at $512.03 on 5 December 2025, only modestly below their 52‑week high and well ahead of the broader market. Over the past year, CRWD has returned roughly 40–50%, compared with low‑teens gains for the S&P 500, underlining how investors are still willing to pay up for high‑growth, AI‑exposed cybersecurity leaders. ^[3]

A recent valuation review from Simply Wall St highlights just how far the stock has come:

3‑year shareholder return: ~345%
1‑month move: about –4%, showing some cooling after the post‑outage surge
“Popular narrative” fair value estimate: $533 per share, implying CRWD is ~4% undervalued at $512
Discounted cash flow (DCF) fair value: $441.75 per share, which would make the stock look overvalued on more conservative assumptions ^[4]

A separate comparative piece on 24/7 Wall St notes that CrowdStrike now trades at roughly 28.8× trailing sales, more than double rival Zscaler’s ~13.7× multiple, reinforcing the idea that investors are assigning a premium for scale, brand and AI leadership. ^[5]

Barron’s, meanwhile, points out that after the 2024 outage, the stock has rallied more than 130% from its post‑crisis low, and now sits at around 77× projected free cash flow — far above the software sector average. ^[6] That combination of huge past returns and rich multiples is exactly why so many analysts are debating how much upside is left from here.

2. Q3 FY2026 earnings: revenue beat, ARR acceleration and higher guidance

Headline numbers

On 2 December 2025, CrowdStrike reported results for its third quarter of fiscal 2026 (three months ended 31 October 2025). The company beat expectations on both revenue and earnings and raised full‑year guidance, driven by strong demand for its AI‑driven Falcon platform. ^[7]

Key figures:

Total revenue:$1.23 billion, up 22% year‑over‑year, slightly ahead of analyst estimates around $1.21–$1.22 billion ^[8]
Subscription revenue: about $1.17 billion, up 21% YoY and roughly 95% of total sales ^[9]
Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR):$4.92 billion, up 23% YoY ^[10]
Net new ARR:$265.3 million, a record for Q3 and an eye‑catching 73% YoY acceleration ^[11]
Non‑GAAP EPS:$0.96, up roughly 26% YoY and ahead of the $0.94 consensus ^[12]
GAAP net income:–$34 million (–$0.14 per share), still negative but much improved over prior years ^[13]
Non‑GAAP net income:$245.4 million, a record for the company ^[14]

Cash generation was a major highlight:

Cash from operations: about $398 million (another record)
Free cash flow (FCF): roughly $296 million, about 24% of revenue
Cash and equivalents: approximately $4.80 billion on the balance sheet ^[15]

Non‑GAAP subscription gross margin stayed at an excellent ~81%, and total TTM gross margin is about 75%, numbers that place CrowdStrike in the very top tier of software businesses by profitability. ^[16]

Customer metrics and Falcon Flex

Management’s strategy continues to revolve around selling more modules to existing customers and standardising on a single lightweight agent across endpoints, cloud and identity. That’s showing up clearly in usage metrics:

ARR ended the quarter at $4.92B
Falcon Flex — the usage‑based licensing model — has now surpassed $1.35B in ARR, growing more than 200% YoY ^[17]
Multi‑module adoption keeps rising: about 49% of customers now use six or more modules, 34% use seven or more, and 24% use eight or more ^[18]

Third‑party recaps describe Q3 FY2026 as “one of [CrowdStrike’s] best quarters in company history,” with net new ARR re‑accelerating and Flex driving deeper customer penetration in cloud, identity and SIEM. ^[19]

Forward guidance: a strong finish to FY2026

CrowdStrike raised its full‑year outlook, citing broad‑based demand for AI‑driven security:

Q4 FY2026 revenue guidance:$1.29–$1.30 billion, materially above prior consensus near $1.22B ^[20]
FY2026 revenue guidance:$4.80–$4.81 billion
FY2026 non‑GAAP EPS guidance:$3.70–$3.72 ^[21]
Management now expects H2 FY2026 net new ARR growth of at least 50% YoY, and still targets ~20% net new ARR growth in FY2027 ^[22]

Short term, that guidance helped reassure investors that the post‑outage slowdown is over and that the company is back to compounding at low‑20s revenue growth with expanding margins.

3. AI, cloud and platform news: building the “agentic” security stack

A major reason CrowdStrike commands such a high multiple is its effort to position Falcon as the AI‑native “brain” of the modern Security Operations Center (SOC). Over the last few weeks, the company has rolled out a series of AI and cloud‑focused announcements that matter for the stock story.

AWS awards and agentic AI specialization

At AWS re:Invent 2025, CrowdStrike was named AWS 2025 Global Security Partner of the Year and Global Marketplace Partner of the Year, becoming the first cloud‑native cybersecurity ISV to exceed $1 billion in AWS Marketplace sales in a single calendar year. AWS also expanded distribution by bundling Falcon Go with every Amazon Business Prime subscription. ^[23]

CrowdStrike simultaneously announced that it is an inaugural AWS Agentic AI Specialization partner, describing an “Agentic Security Platform” that:

Acts as an AI‑ready data layer for security telemetry
Uses a mission‑ready agent workforce trained on Falcon Complete and incident‑response expertise
Exposes Charlotte AI AgentWorks and Charlotte Agentic SOAR as low‑code tools to orchestrate AI agents across detection and response ^[24]

The company says it can now secure the entire AI lifecycle on AWS, integrating with services such as Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Bedrock and AWS IAM Identity Center, and extending protection through its Pangea acquisition to offer AI Detection and Response. ^[25]

HPE Unleash AI and Kroll MDR partnerships

Beyond AWS, CrowdStrike has deepened several strategic alliances:

HPE Unleash AI program: HPE selected CrowdStrike to safeguard high‑performance AI workloads inside HPE Private Cloud AI, its turnkey AI factory developed with Nvidia. The Falcon platform will provide unified endpoint, identity, cloud and data protection across hybrid and multi‑cloud environments, broadening CrowdStrike’s reach into AI infrastructure deployments. ^[26]
Kroll multi‑year MDR deal: Kroll is migrating protection for more than 500,000 endpoints to Falcon Complete Next‑Gen MDR, aiming to retire legacy tools in favour of CrowdStrike’s AI‑native managed service. CrowdStrike highlights past results such as a roughly 75% reduction in mean time to respond and remediation of more than 13 million detections annually in Falcon Complete environments. ^[27]

Both agreements support the idea that large enterprises and service providers increasingly see CrowdStrike as a platform rather than a point product — an important distinction when thinking about long‑term ARR durability.

Cloud detection, SIEM and identity innovation

Alongside these partnerships, CrowdStrike has packed in a dense cadence of product news over late 2025:

Real‑time Cloud Detection and Response (CDR): new event‑streaming detection engine for cloud logs, expanded cloud Indicators of Attack (IOAs), and automated response workflows via Falcon Fusion SOAR to stop cloud attacks in seconds. ^[28]
Next‑Gen SIEM on AWS: enhanced AWS Marketplace integrations, an automated “Quick Launch” to ingest CloudTrail and Security Hub telemetry within minutes, and pay‑as‑you‑go options for Falcon Next‑Gen SIEM and Falcon Cloud Security. ^[29]
Agentic SOC vision: CrowdStrike’s own blogs describe the Falcon platform evolving for an “agentic security era,” where AI agents orchestrate SOC workflows across data, identities and clouds. ^[30]
Public sector AI:Charlotte AI recently achieved FedRAMP High Authorization, enabling U.S. federal, state and local agencies to use its AI agents in GovCloud; early deployments aim to remove more than 40 hours of manual SOC work per week and deliver triage accuracy above 98%. ^[31]
Endpoint and identity leadership: Falcon recently scored 100% protection and accuracy in an SE Labs endpoint protection test, and CrowdStrike has been recognized as a leader in multiple third‑party evaluations for identity threat detection and SaaS security posture management. ^[32]

For investors, all of this feeds a clear narrative: CrowdStrike is racing to become the default security operating layer for AI workloads, agents and data, not just another endpoint antivirus vendor.

4. Wall Street sentiment: broadly bullish, but upside is narrowing

With such strong fundamentals, it’s no surprise that analysts largely like the stock — though many are also cautious on valuation.

Ratings and consensus price targets

Different data providers quote slightly different numbers, but they tell a similar story:

Barchart reports a “Moderate Buy” consensus, with a mean price target around $543, implying roughly 3% upside from ~$512. Among 46 analysts tracked, there are 26 Strong Buys, 3 Moderate Buys, 15 Holds and 2 Strong Sells. ^[33]
MarketBeat and other aggregators show an average 12‑month target in the mid‑$550s (around $556), with a high target near $706 and a low in the mid‑$300s, suggesting about 8–9% upside from current levels. ^[34]
Benzinga’s compilation of the most recent notes over the last three months puts the consensus target around $554, with the highest fresh target at $640 and the lowest at $343. ^[35]

In other words, Wall Street still skew bullish on CRWD, but most price targets now cluster only single‑digit percentages above the current quote — a sign the stock has already priced in a lot of good news.

Notable analyst calls

Recent commentary around Q3 FY2026 has been particularly positive:

Wedbush’s Dan Ives reiterates an “Outperform” rating with a $600 target, calling CrowdStrike the “gold standard” of cybersecurity and arguing the company is still in the early innings of a multi‑year AI and platform‑consolidation cycle. ^[36]
Jefferies also maintains a Buy with a $600 target, praising 22%+ ARR growth and acceleration across endpoint, cloud, SIEM and identity, and expressing confidence in 23%+ ARR growth into FY2027. ^[37]
RBC Capital, Scotiabank, JPMorgan and Needham have all lifted their targets into a range roughly between $575 and $621, generally with Buy/Outperform ratings and bullish takes on Charlotte AI, Falcon Flex and Next‑Gen SIEM. ^[38]
On the more cautious side, Morgan Stanley keeps an Equal‑Weight rating with a $515 target, noting that while platform adoption is strong — nearly half of customers now run six or more modules — the lack of upward revisions to outer‑year estimates may limit near‑term upside. ^[39]

MarketBeat also highlights that DA Davidson recently trimmed longer‑term EPS estimates but maintained a Buy rating and a $580 target, reflecting the tension between stellar execution and already rich expectations. ^[40]

5. Competing valuations: is CrowdStrike stock overvalued, fair or still cheap?

Even among bullish analysts and model‑driven sites, opinions differ on whether CRWD’s price fully reflects its growth.

Simply Wall St’s “popular narrative” model suggests CrowdStrike is about 4% undervalued at $512 relative to a fair value of $533, based on aggressive growth and high margins. Its DCF model, however, pegs fair value much lower at $441.75, implying the stock is ahead of its cash‑flow fundamentals if growth normalizes. ^[41]
24/7 Wall St compares CrowdStrike with Zscaler and notes that CRWD trades at 28.81× trailing sales, roughly twice Zscaler’s 13.71×. The article argues that CrowdStrike is entering a more mature phase, with net new ARR growth projected to slow to around 20% in FY2027, increasing the risk of multiple compression if growth disappoints. ^[42]
Barron’s emphasises that post‑outage the company trades at ~77× projected free cash flow, far above the sector average, even though revenue growth has settled around 20% from triple‑digit rates in 2019. ^[43]

On the other hand, bullish fundamental write‑ups (including a widely shared LinkedIn analysis of the quarter) point out that CrowdStrike is delivering:

>20% top‑line growth
ARR up 23% with 73% growth in net new ARR
Non‑GAAP operating margins around 21%
FCF margins in the mid‑20s

These metrics, combined with a huge estimated addressable market and early leadership in AI‑driven security, are used to justify the current premium multiples. ^[44]

For investors, the valuation debate boils down to a simple question: Can CrowdStrike sustain high‑teens to 20%+ growth for many years while expanding margins — and avoid major stumbles like 2024? If yes, the current price may prove reasonable; if not, there is clear downside risk to the multiple.

6. Key risks: outages, competition and slowing growth

Despite its strong quarter, CrowdStrike is not without risks — some of them very visible after the events of 2024.

Legacy of the 2024 global outage

In July 2024, a flawed CrowdStrike software update to Windows devices caused a massive global IT outage, affecting an estimated 8.5 million machines and disrupting airlines, banks, hospitals and government agencies worldwide. ^[45]

The incident:

Wiped roughly 36% off the stock by August 2024
Triggered investigations, reputational damage and legal scrutiny
Led to at least one prominent lawsuit, including Delta Air Lines’ case, which still has some negligence claims proceeding in court ^[46]

While the Q3 FY2026 results and guidance strongly suggest customer trust has largely recovered, any further high‑profile reliability failure could hit both growth and valuation quickly.

Intense competition and “mature phase” dynamics

CrowdStrike competes directly with heavyweights like Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks and Zscaler, alongside smaller specialists such as SentinelOne and a growing universe of AI‑security startups. ^[47]

The 24/7 Wall St comparison underscores that:

Zscaler is still growing ARR slightly faster (about 26% vs. CrowdStrike’s 23%), and
CrowdStrike’s management itself expects net new ARR growth to decelerate to ~20% in FY2027 even after a strong H2 FY2026. ^[48]

If cloud and AI security spending shifts more towards network‑centric players, or if enterprises decide not to consolidate as aggressively on a single agent, CRWD’s growth trajectory could slow faster than the market expects.

Macro, regulation and AI risk

Additional risk factors investors often flag include:

Macro and IT budgets: Cybersecurity is more resilient than many categories, but sustained macro pressure could still extend deal cycles and encourage price sensitivity. ^[49]
Regulation and AI misuse: As AI‑driven security tools become more powerful, regulators may tighten rules on data usage, model transparency and cross‑border flows. At the same time, attackers are using AI to automate and scale cyber‑attacks, raising the stakes if defenses fail. ^[50]
Stock‑based compensation and GAAP profitability: CrowdStrike’s GAAP results remain negative largely because of heavy investment and equity compensation. If investors pivot toward demanding clean GAAP profits, high‑multiple names like CRWD may de‑rate. ^[51]

7. What to watch next for CrowdStrike stock

For readers following CRWD through the rest of FY2026 and into FY2027, key metrics and catalysts to monitor include:

Net new ARR and H2 FY2026 targets
- Does CrowdStrike deliver 50%+ net new ARR growth in the second half, as guided?
- How quickly does that growth line trend toward the 20% FY2027 target, and is the deceleration smooth or abrupt? ^[52]
Module adoption and Flex momentum
- Further increases in the percentage of customers using six, seven and eight or more modules would reinforce the “platform” thesis.
- Watch how fast Falcon Flex ARR grows beyond its current $1.35B+ base. ^[53]
AI wins and large‑scale cloud deals
- Uptake of CrowdStrike’s Agentic AI Specialization on AWS, HPE Private Cloud AI integrations, and AI‑heavy MDR deals like Kroll will show whether its agentic SOC vision is turning into large, sticky revenue streams. ^[54]
Margins and cash generation
- Maintaining or expanding 20%+ non‑GAAP operating margins and mid‑20s FCF margins would help justify premium multiples even if growth moderates. ^[55]
Legal and reputational developments from the 2024 outage
- Any material settlements, regulatory outcomes or new incidents could move sentiment quickly, positive or negative. ^[56]

8. Bottom line: how the narrative looks on 6 December 2025

As of early December 2025, CrowdStrike stock sits at the intersection of three powerful themes:

Cybersecurity as a structural growth market
AI reshaping SOC operations
Platform consolidation around a few large vendors

The latest quarter strengthened the bull case: revenue and ARR re‑accelerated, cash flow hit record levels, and management felt confident enough to raise guidance for both revenue and earnings. At the same time, a flood of AI and cloud‑security announcements with AWS, HPE and Kroll underline the company’s ambition to be the core security layer for AI workloads rather than just an endpoint player. ^[57]

The other side of that story is valuation: with CRWD trading at high‑20s sales multiples and elevated free‑cash‑flow multiples, even many bulls view the stock as “priced for excellence” rather than obvious deep value. Consensus price targets mostly cluster only slightly above current levels, reflecting solid near‑term upside but limited room for big multiple expansion unless growth and AI monetization exceed already ambitious expectations. ^[58]

For long‑term investors, CrowdStrike on 6 December 2025 looks like a high‑quality, high‑expectation compounder: execution has rarely been stronger, but the bar is set high, and missteps — technical, competitive or regulatory — could be punished quickly.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, a recommendation to buy or sell any security, or a substitute for professional financial guidance. Always do your own research and consider your individual financial situation before making investment decisions.