Terra wins CrowdStrike’s startup accelerator prize – News

The stage at Fal.Con 2025 spotlighted one of the hottest new names in cybersecurity today: Terra Security Inc. Having won CrowdStrike Inc.’s Cybersecurity Startup Accelerator program for 2025, Terra now has the backing of notable companies such as Nvidia Corp., Amazon Web Services Inc. and CrowdStrike itself.

Terra aims to reimagine offensive security through agentic artificial intelligence-powered penetration testing — a breakthrough that could revolutionize how enterprises defend against evolving threats.

“We knew that everything around offensive security, pen testing, red teaming and ethical hacking should be one of the most effective security capabilities, being the one that can show us what adversaries can really do, what’s exploitable and not just vulnerable — but it was broken for all the right reasons,” said Shahar Peled (pictured, left), co-founder and chief security officer at Terra Security. “You just needed the best talent out there to mimic adversaries. And this, by default, is manual. But lately, there have been so many changes both in the risks because of AI and how fast we can develop and change the attack surface, but also how adversaries are adopting technologies.”

Peled, alongside Daniel Bernard (right), chief business officer of CrowdStrike, and CJ Moses (center), chief information security officer and vice president of security engineering at AWS, spoke with theCUBE’s Dave Vellante at Fal.Con, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, News Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how Terra is blending startup agility with enterprise systems and ushering in next-gen cybersecurity. (* Disclosure below.)

Building the startup accelerator ecosystem

CrowdStrike’s startup accelerator program was born out of a collaboration between AWS, CrowdStrike and later, Nvidia, to create the next wave of cybersecurity innovation. The accelerator program attracts global attention — nearly 1,000 applicants last year, with only 35 reaching the finalist stage. The winners, selected at the RSA 2025 Conference after a Shark Tank-style pitch, gain mentorship and further access to the partner ecosystems of AWS, CrowdStrike and Nvidia, according to Bernard.

“Together, we have content that helps these founding teams learn what it takes to succeed in building a company,” he said. “They hear from execs from all the companies. AWS really helps us operate the program. They have a great startup program. We give them benefits in terms of product from all of our companies, in addition to the education.”

Additionally, the cloud has eliminated barriers for early-stage companies, according to Moses. What once required racks of servers and capital investments can now be scaled rapidly through AWS infrastructure. Subsequently, innovative startups enjoy quicker time to value and heightened scalability.

“What we’ve understood is that just because we’re big doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be humble and understand that there’s a lot of innovation that’s still happening out there,” Moses said. “It needs to happen, especially with all the different changes that go on in the world, AI being the most recent. Those startups are the ones that have those great ideas that can actually germinate.”

This year’s Fal.Con shows how accelerators such as CrowdStrike’s are reshaping how cybersecurity innovation reaches the market. As for Terra, it has identified two goals: Expand its go-to-market reach to secure millions in annual recurring revenue and evolve from a point solution into a full offensive security platform.

Here’s the complete video interview, part of News’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Fal.Con:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Fal.Con. Neither CrowdStrike Inc., the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or News.)

Photo: News