- Bridgewater president and CTO, Igor Tsyganskiy, has left the hedge fund.
- He is joining Microsoft as the firm’s chief strategy officer of security.
- He told Insider he’s making the move to help combat cybersecurity on a broader scale.
Bridgewater has lost its top tech executive.
Igor Tsyganskiy, chief technology officer and president, is leaving the world’s largest hedge fund after seven years, Insider has learned.
Tsyganskiy oversaw the technology that powers the some-$150 billion hedge fund, from the cloud to investment research systems and trading. He was also a member of the operating and executive committees.
Tsyganskiy is leaving for Microsoft to focus on cybersecurity — “one of the most important things in computer science and for the world right now,” he told Insider.
“If you look at the sophistication of cyber-attacks and the type of cyber attacks that were happening a decade ago, they’re very different than they are today,” Tsyganskiy said, adding that attacks on critical infrastructure in the US, like power grids or oil pipelines, have increased drastically.
With the aim to combat the threat on a broader scale, Tsyganskiy told Insider he is set to join Microsoft as chief strategy officer of security in September and will relocate to the Bay Area from Connecticut. His last day at Bridgewater was Aug. 1, and in a post on LinkedIn, he outlined his part in the “nonstop marathon” that transformed the Westport, Connecticut-based firm.
Since joining Bridgewater in 2016, Tsyganskiy overhauled nearly every system at Bridgewater, including the firm’s trading and back-office systems. He was pivotal in Bridgewater’s move to the cloud and scaled the firm’s investment-research platform.
“Due to the work that I was doing at Bridgewater, I was essentially in the middle of dealing with strengthening the cybersecurity both for Bridgewater, but as well as for the industry as a whole,” Tsyganskiy said told Insider, referring to his work regarding client-facing systems that touched some of the largest financial firms in the country.
Tsyganskiy also thanked Greg Jensen, Bridgewater’s co-chief investment officer, who has been key to the firm’s AI efforts, as an exceptional partner.
Prior to Bridgewater, Tsyganskiy ran database.com, a division of Salesforce.com, and was the cofounder of Tealeaf Technologies, which was sold to IBM.
Two executives at Bridgewater were promoted to co-heads of technology to succeed Tsyganskiy in March 2023, Oliver Radwan and Kevin Brennan, who is also the director of investment systems, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The transition comes as Bridgewater settles into a new era. Last October, the fund’s founder and former CEO, Ray Dalio stepped down, and his successor Nir Bar Dea in March laid out his plans to boost profitability, cut costs, and restructure parts of the firm.
Creating a blueprint for Microsoft’s $20 billion security division
Tsyganskiy is no stranger to Microsoft; Bridgewater used Microsoft’s cybersecurity tools, such as Hunting Experts, a service that proactively seeks out security threats on behalf of clients.
Tsyganskiy noted he would be joining Charlie Bell, who has been running Microsoft’s $20 billion security business since 2021 when he left Amazon Web Services, which he cofounded. Bell recently told Insider that AI would give Microsoft the upper hand to “finally turn the tables on the attackers.”
The rise of artificial intelligence, while promising and potentially revolutionary to the way we work, also introduces an unprecedented step change in the “relentless tide of cyber threats,” Tsyganskiy said in his LinkedIn post, adding that “even the best security technologies from three years ago risk becoming obsolete swiftly.”
He said his mandate will be to define Microsoft’s security strategy globally, ultimately influencing the tools and services the tech giant develops, spanning private and public sector, and among individuals, small and medium businesses, large corporations, and global infrastructure.
“Basically, end-to-end strategy on how Microsoft approaches the cybersecurity sector is my job,” Tsyganskiy told Insider.
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