Ocean raises $20 million Series A to tackle AI-driven email attacks
The cybersecurity startup says its platform replaces legacy phishing defenses with AI agents that analyze intent, not just patterns.
Ocean, an AI-based email security platform, has raised $20 million in a Series A funding round.
The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Picture Capital, the fund of Island founders Mike Fey and Dan Amiga, as well as Transmit founders Rakesh Loonkar and Mickey Boodaei, and Cerca Partners. Angel investors include Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport, Armis founders Yevgeny Dibrov and Nadir Izrael, and Axis Security CEO Dor Knafo, who is also a partner at Cyberstarts, along with other leading investors. The company previously raised an $8 million Seed round in 2024, also led by Picture Capital. Ocean Security currently employs about 35 people.
The company was founded in 2024 by Shay Shwartz and Oran Moyal, who both served in elite units in the IDF Intelligence Corps and were later tasked with establishing a joint unit for the IDF and Shin Bet, where they led major projects over four years and received personal awards, including the Israel Security Award.
After their military service, Shwartz joined Axis Security, which was later acquired by HPE, while Moyal joined VisibleRisk, which was acquired by BitSight, and later Microsoft, where he founded a group focused on identifying security weaknesses in Azure cloud products. The idea for Ocean Security emerged from their defense-sector experience, where they identified a lack of effective solutions for protecting against email-based phishing attacks.
In an interview with Calcalist, Moyal said that during his service in the Shin Bet, he observed how attackers use social engineering and phishing to manipulate users. “Some attackers are motivated by money, others by access to information or control over systems,” he said. “The goal varies, but the method is consistent: building a detailed profile of the target. What once took weeks can now be done in minutes using AI. The entire process of data collection and attack generation has become automated, and attacks that were once rare are now the norm.”
Addressing competition in the market, Moyal said existing solutions were designed for a previous generation of threats. “Traditional systems were built for an era when malicious links were the main threat. Then came behavioral analysis tools like Abnormal. But AI has changed the game, it can perfectly mimic legitimate communication, understand user context, and construct highly targeted phishing messages with no clear anomalies.”
Moyal added that Ocean Security already generates seven-figure revenues and is actively replacing legacy products in customer environments. “Some organizations are easier to replace than others, but the shift requires a fundamentally different approach,” he said.
The company currently protects enterprise environments ranging from Fortune 500 companies to global organizations such as Kayak, Kingston, and Headspace. It has processed over one billion emails in its first year and now handles a similar volume every month, securing hundreds of thousands of mailboxes worldwide. Ocean Security says it has already prevented attacks that could have caused tens of millions of dollars in damages.
The new funding will be used to expand AI research, triple headcount within a year, and accelerate platform development amid rising demand for defenses against increasingly sophisticated AI-driven attacks.
According to Shwartz, the core challenge in modern cybersecurity is no longer detecting anomalies but understanding intent and context.
The company’s platform uses AI agents that inspect every email in real time, operating like human security analysts. Instead of relying on pattern recognition alone, the system evaluates sender identity, message content, organizational context, and embedded links to detect phishing and social engineering attacks, even when messages appear legitimate. The platform integrates with Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 in minutes via API, providing immediate protection and retrospective analysis of prior communications. By automating investigative workflows, Ocean reduces workload on security teams while improving detection accuracy at scale.
