Ocean, an agentic email security startup, emerged from stealth mode in May 2026 with $28 million in total funding to tackle the growing threat of AI-generated phishing attacks.
The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Picture Capital and Cerca Partners. Notable angel investors include Wiz co-founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport, and Armis co-founders Yevgeny Dibrov and Nadir Izrael, whose company recently sold to ServiceNow for $7.75 billion.
Ocean was founded by CEO Shay Shwartz and co-founder and CTO Oran Moyal. Shwartz’s background spans both sides of cybersecurity: he began hacking as a teenager before being caught at age 16, then spent roughly a decade in cybersecurity roles for Israel’s defense and intelligence units, including work connected to the Iron Dome project. He later joined Axis, a startup subsequently acquired by HPE, before launching Ocean two years ago.
The company’s platform uses a small language model built specifically to analyze incoming emails, assess sender intent, and evaluate each message against an organization’s specific context. The goal is to detect fraud and impersonation attempts at scale. Ocean says it is already processing billions of emails per month for customers including Kayak, Kingston Technology, and Headspace.
Shwartz argues that existing email security tools are not equipped for the current threat landscape. AI has automated what was once a labor-intensive process — spear-phishing attacks that required extensive manual research — making highly targeted attacks far easier to execute at volume. “AI just made the entire process automatic, so the scale is much, much bigger now,” he told TechCrunch.
As AI lowers the barrier for launching sophisticated phishing campaigns, Ocean’s emergence suggests demand may be growing for security tools designed specifically to counter AI-driven threats rather than traditional phishing methods.
Source: TechCrunch