It was a bad day for one race car-driving cybersecurity billionaire’s company—and wallet.
F
riday’s tech outage hasn’t just cut people around the world off from their precious files, locked up their bank accounts and grounded their flights home—it has also taken a huge chunk out of George Kurtz’s fortune.
The billionaire cofounder and CEO of CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company whose software sparked the outage, Kurtz’s net worth has dropped by about $300 million as of 3:30 p.m. Eastern on Friday, as shares of CrowdStrike stock have plunged 11% since Thursday’s close. Forbes estimates that Kurtz, who was worth more than $3.2 billion Thursday, now has a fortune of about $2.9 billion.
The reason for the drop is simple: Most of Kurtz’s wealth is tied up in CrowdStrike stock. He has served as CEO of the business since cofounding it in 2012. He owns more than 3% of the company shares. They’ve been a lucrative investment, helping propel the 53-year-old Kurtz from $1.2 billion in net worth following CrowdStrike’s 2019 IPO to $3.2 billion before Friday’s debacle, as the stock has more than quadrupled in value over the past five years amid a growing need for cybersecurity. Annual recurring revenue surpassed $3.4 billion in its most recent fiscal year, which ended January 31.
