CrowdStrike (CRWD) launched a tool that lets companies shut down misbehaving AI agents on command. Jim Cramer called it a “GAME CHANGER.” However, the stock is down nearly 10% over the past week.
Deutsche Bank recently upgraded its price target for CrowdStrike stock. Will this new tool bring even more positive sentiment?
What Does the CrowdStrike AI Kill Switch Do?
AI agents are programs that carry out tasks on their own using an employee’s logins and access. They can go off course without ever being hacked.
CrowdStrike unveiled the switch at Fal.Con Europe, its customer conference in Barcelona. An administrator can halt a running agent, block it from restarting, and cut its network access, per the company’s announcement.
For now, the stop works at a gateway that agent traffic passes through. Shutdown on employee computers comes later.
CrowdStrike also agreed to buy Fiddler AI, which tracks agent behavior, and Dreadnode, which tests AI for weak spots. The Wall Street Journal put the combined price near $495 million.
“Every company is asking the same question about AI agents: can they be stopped? Now the answer is yes,” CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz noted in a post.
Can Cramer’s Call Lift CRWD Stock?
Cramer, host of CNBC’s Mad Money, answered that post with “Here we go. GAME CHANGER…” In September, he also made an earlier MUST BUY call on the stock.
Of 40 analysts tracked by TipRanks, 34 rate CRWD a Buy and none a Sell. Their average target of $267.24 sits about 10.5% above Monday’s close.
This average target still sits well below what Deutsche Bank analyst Brad Zelnick expects, after raising his 12-month target to $300 from $240, citing “a tsunami of cyber demand.”
Still, CRWD has already climbed about 107% this year, and Dan Ives named it among his top 5 tech picks.
Analysts tie Monday’s drop to profit-taking across cybersecurity stocks, including Fortinet and Zscaler.
Meanwhile, even as CrowdStrike touts an AI kill switch, Forrester analyst Jeff Pollard thinks today’s agents could get around one.
“Unfortunately, most ‘kill switches’ pretend that the work is done when the agent is stopped which is not true….So finding ways to circumvent a kill switch is definitely within agentic capabilities of today’s production agents,” he told Forbes.
Stopping an agent also cannot undo its past actions.
Rivals Okta and ServiceNow are building similar controls. In Washington, a House bill, the AI Kill Switch Act, would require AI developers to keep a shutdown option.
