Key facts
- Ward is raising a second fund targeting roughly the same size as Brightmind's $250 million debut.
- Ward is Brightmind's sole general partner after Gur Talpaz and Tayler Sipperly left in April.
- Brightmind's first fund has made 14 investments to date, with one exit: SGNL.
- CrowdStrike agreed in January to buy SGNL for $740 million, 11 months after Brightmind led its Series A.
- Talpaz and Sipperly co-founded Cognition with Elia Zaitsev in August; it is reportedly targeting a $170 million first fund.
- PitchBook counts $4.7 billion of seed-through-Series B cybersecurity deals through September, ahead of all of 2025.
Stephen Ward, co-founder of New York cybersecurity fund Brightmind Partners, is raising a second fund targeting roughly the same size as the firm's $250 million debut, which closed late last year. He is doing so as the firm's sole general partner after co-founder Gur Talpaz and early colleague Tayler Sipperly left in April.
Ward says he sells on the way up. Brightmind's first fund has made 14 investments to date, with one exit: SGNL, the identity security startup CrowdStrike agreed in January to buy for $740 million, 11 months after Brightmind led its Series A. Some investors asked why Brightmind did not hold the bet longer; Ward says the best sales in cybersecurity come between a startup's third and seventh years.
Ward's career began in the Coast Guard, where he spent four years in search and rescue, followed by nine years in the Secret Service. Stationed in New York, he arrested a hacker behind the largest credit card data theft of that era and ran him as an informant for about three years before the hacker was caught again and told the agency, as a diversionary tactic, that Ward was involved. Ward, by then in the private sector, spent roughly 18 months clearing his name. The hacker ultimately received a 20-year sentence.
He was recruited to J.P. Morgan in 2007 to build a cybersecurity unit, then spent six years as CISO at TIAA and two years at Home Depot starting in 2019. He quit Home Depot in 2021 and was hired at Insight Partners after interviewing with Jeff Horing, working on Wiz, Abnormal Security and Elisity. He started Brightmind in 2024 with Talpaz, a CrowdStrike corporate development executive.
Asked about the split, Ward cited "differences in opinions regarding operations and the future of Brightmind." In August, Talpaz and Sipperly co-founded Cognition with Elia Zaitsev, CrowdStrike's global CTO for the past three years; it is reportedly targeting a $170 million first fund.
Early-stage cybersecurity startups are out-raising later-stage rivals for the first time in more than a decade, according to PitchBook, which counts $4.7 billion of seed-through-Series B deals through September, ahead of all of 2025. The number of deals fell to 248 from 358 last year, while the average seed round rose to $8.4 million in the first nine months of this year from $5.54 million a year earlier.