Alphabet (GOOGL) Cuts Stake in Cybersecurity Firm CrowdStrike

Google parent company Alphabet (GOOGL) has reduced its stake in leading cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike Holdings
(CRWD).

Alphabet sold 353,665 CRWD shares during this year’s first quarter, lowering its stake to 74,230 shares, according to a form filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The search engine giant had owned 427,895 shares of CrowdStrike stock at the end of 2024. Organizations that manage more than $100 million of publicly traded securities are required to file quarterly updates with the SEC.

CrowdStrike, a top cybersecurity firm, had an outage last July that crippled millions of personal computers and business systems worldwide, hurting the company’s reputation and share price. The outage resulted from a flaw in a cybersecurity upgrade that was pushed out to devices worldwide running Microsoft (MSFT) Windows.

While CRWD stock initially plunged following the global outage, it has since recovered and is up nearly 30% this year, far outpacing the benchmark S&P 500 index that is down 3% in 2025. It isn’t clear why Alphabet has been selling down its stake in CrowdStrike. It could be that the company is simply locking in profits as the share price rises.

Alphabet initially invested in CRWD stock pre-IPO back in 2015 through a growth fund. CrowdStrike went public in 2019. The Google parent last sold CrowdStrike stock before the 2024 outage, cutting its stake in half last spring. GOOGL stock is down 13% this year.