Toto Wolff has sold a portion of his 33.3% stake in the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula 1 Team to George Kurtz, the billionaire founder and CEO of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. The transaction, filed with the FIA last week, reduces Wolff's ownership position while leaving him as team principal and CEO through his current contract, which runs through the end of 2026. Neither party disclosed the percentage sold or the valuation.
Wolff acquired his one-third stake in 2013 when he joined Mercedes as managing partner, matching the positions held by Mercedes parent company Daimler (now Mercedes-Benz Group AG) and chemical executive Rene Berger's investment vehicle. The team has since won eight consecutive constructors' championships from 2014 to 2021, a period during which F1's commercial value increased roughly 400%, according to Liberty Media filings. Kurtz, whose CrowdStrike went public in 2019 at a $6.7 billion valuation and now trades near $90 billion, has no prior disclosed involvement in motorsport ownership. He sits on the board of the NFL's Owners Advisory Committee through his minority stake in the Denver Broncos, purchased in 2022 alongside the Walton-Penner family group for $4.65 billion.
The timing suggests preparation for Mercedes-Benz Group's anticipated equity rebalancing. The automaker has publicly discussed reducing its F1 exposure as it redirects capital toward electric vehicle manufacturing, and insiders expect the parent company to drop below 50% ownership by mid-2025. Wolff's partial exit gives him liquidity without triggering management change clauses in driver contracts or sponsorship agreements, which typically include key-person provisions tied to his continued involvement. It also opens runway for Kurtz to scale his position if Mercedes divests further. The structure mirrors McLaren's 2020 minority sale to MSP Sports Capital, where initial investors later doubled down.
For sponsors, the signal is continuity. Wolff remains the decision-maker on technical direction, driver lineup, and commercial partnerships. Petronas, whose title sponsorship runs through 2025 at an estimated $70 million annually, renewed in 2021 specifically because Wolff assured them of his operational commitment. Crowdstrike itself is now a logical inbound partner conversation—McLaren signed a cybersecurity deal with Splunk for $20 million over three years in 2022, and Red Bull Racing pays Acronis roughly $15 million per season. Kurtz knows the margin profile: F1 teams at Mercedes' level generate 18-22% EBITDA on revenues near $450 million, per Sportico's 2023 valuations.
Watch for Kurtz's first paddock appearance, likely at the Miami Grand Prix in early May, where NFL owners traditionally gather and Liberty Media hosts its U.S. sponsor summit. Separately, monitor whether Mercedes-Benz Group announces equity movement at its Q2 earnings call in late July—CFO Harald Wilhelm has twice mentioned "partnership evolution" in F1 during investor presentations this year. If Wolff's sale was 10-15% of his stake, that values the team between $1.8 billion and $2.2 billion depending on the multiplier Kurtz accepted, a range consistent with Sportico's most recent comps.
The deal confirms what team valuations have telegraphed since Andretti's failed $1 billion entry bid: F1 equity is now alternative-asset territory. Wolff liquidated part of his position at the top of the market cycle, kept his job, and brought in a billionaire with sports-franchise experience and a Rolodex that includes half the Fortune 500 CISOs. Kurtz gets a seat at the table of the fastest-growing premium sports property, with option value if Mercedes steps back further. The only question left is percentage.
The takeaway
Wolff's partial exit to Kurtz preserves operational control while preparing for Mercedes-Benz Group's expected equity reduction by mid-2025.
The branded-identity layer Chiefs of Staff and heritage CMOs route through — your name imprinted on real authorized stock, your pick of 200+ brands and 70,000 products, shipped from one accountable house. Nine editorial desks publish the intelligence those operators read before they sign.
200+authorized brands
70,000products · virtual proof on each
9 deskspublishing daily
1997one house, since
70,000 SKUs · virtual proof in 60 seconds · no platform fee · blind-shipped · ASI #217876
Your next customer won't visit your website. Their AI will.
AI assistants have quietly taken over the first step of buying — they answer from catalogs they can read and shortlist whoever can actually ship. Two questions now decide whether you exist to that buyer: can a machine read your catalog, and can you fulfill the order. Most brands fail one or both and never find out why the orders went elsewhere. The winners of this shift aren't the loudest. They're the most readable. Build for the machine that's about to do the shopping.
Built by the craft floor — apparel, media, packaging, and secure print.
This trade runs on hands, not desks. Imprint manufacturing & Komori Press · Canon high-speed secure-media operations is a craft floor — genuine Six Sigma discipline applied to ink, thread, foil, and registration, where a hundredth of an inch is the difference between a brand that reads serious and one that reads cheap. POPS4 is built by exactly those operators: independent, boots-on-the-ground engineers who carry their own book, read a client in microseconds, and put their name on every run. Beyond our own Virginia Beach floor, we work with a vetted network of craft manufacturers across the US — each meeting the highest excellence in QC standards in the industry, each a specialist in its own discipline — so apparel, hard-goods imprinting, media manufacturing, packaging, and secure printing all go to the bench built for them, coordinated from one accountable hub. Short-run from twenty-five units, volume to five hundred thousand. Two hundred authorized national brands, seventy thousand SKUs with virtual proofing on every one. Art archived for instant reorders. Net-thirty corporate terms, NDA-standard white-label — your name on the work, or none at all.
Strategy, positioning, identity, creative, and messaging — wired into an AI system that publishes and distributes on its own. Nine editorial desks generate the authority, the production house ships the physical proof, and the attribution layer tells you which post sold which SKU. What you get is an operating layer — content, catalog, and order path under one roof — that keeps working whether or not you are in the room. Built for principals who would rather own the machine than rent the agency.
Named-account programs — one desk, quiet delivery, NDA-standard.
One point of contact who already knows the file, so nothing restarts from zero between engagements. The work ships blind, under NDA, with your name on it or none at all. Built for single-family offices, heritage-house CMOs, sports-ownership groups, and the agencies that white-label our production. The relationship is the product; the merch is the proof of it.
SFO · Chief of Staff desk. Principal household, properties, aircraft, yacht, calendar, philanthropy — one file.
Shop seventy thousand products. Virtual proof on every one. 24/7.
Drop your logo on any product and see the virtual proof before asking. Quote routes direct to the desk. MCP catalog for AI agents. Celeste for the fast conversation. Full self-service checkout in development.