CrowdStrike global CTO Elia Zaitsev is leaving the cybersecurity giant to launch Cognition, a new venture firm targeting a $170 million fund.Why it matters: AI is creating new attack surfaces, and Cognition is betting the shift will produce a category-defining cybersecurity platform it can find and fund early.State of play: Zaitsev is leaving CrowdStrike after 13 years to launch Cognition alongside Gur Talpaz and Tayler Sipperly.Talpaz and Sipperly worked in corporate development at CrowdStrike before launching their own early-stage fund, Brightmind.There, they helped architect what they said was the largest Series A exit in cyber history: SGNL, which they entered at $105 million and exited at $740 million.They see Zaitsev as their new fund's "superpower," Sipperly said, adding that "being able to offer" his expertise to founders is "deeply unique in the market."Between the lines: Cognition's thesis is that agentic AI is a platform-reset moment for cyber. The three former CrowdStrikers behind the fund are specifically hunting for the rare technical team capable of building the next broad security platform. Cognition plans to lead or co-lead seed and Series A rounds, and expects to make three or four concentrated investments a year.Its model calls for average checks of $6 million at seed and $15 million at Series A.What they're saying: "We have this new attack surface that's being brought on by AI and agents," Zaitsev told Axios.Zaitsev and his cofounders are looking for teams that can "keep up with the constantly changing adversarial threat landscape.""AI security didn't exist five years ago... But as the adoption of AI dramatically ramps up in the enterprise, it requires a new set of tools," Talpaz told Axios. The bottom line: Cognition is betting AI will make cybersecurity harder to address and much more valuable.