Elia Zaitsev
Elia Zaitsev is a cybersecurity executive and venture capitalist who serves as co-founder of Cognition Venture Partners, an early-stage venture firm targeting a $170 million fund focused on AI-native cybersecurity startups. He previously spent 13 years at CrowdStrike, rising from an early sales engineer role to Global Chief Technology Officer, a position he held for approximately three years before departing in 2026. He is best known for his tenure at CrowdStrike during its growth from a pre-revenue startup to a publicly traded cybersecurity leader, and for his thesis that agentic AI represents a platform-reset moment for the cybersecurity industry.
“Cognition: New $170M venture fund targeting AI-native cybersecurity platforms at seed and Series A”
Source→“Elia Zaitsev: Former Global CTO of CrowdStrike (13 years); co-founder of Cognition. Leaving CrowdStrike after 13 years to launch Cognition.”
Source→“Cognition's thesis is that agentic AI is a platform-reset moment for cyber. "We have this new attack surface that's being brought on by AI and agents." — Elia Zaitsev, former CrowdStrike Global CTO”
Source→“Cognition, a new cybersecurity VC firm led by ex-CrowdStrike CTO Elia Zaitsev, is raising $170m for its debut fund.”
Source→AI-extracted from podcast / newsletter / paper summaries. May contain errors.