Ocean Security Raises $28M for AI Email Security

Ocean Security, the world’s only agent email security platform, is unveiled this week with $28 million in funding, including $20 million in Series A.

Ocean Security already protects complex enterprise environments, from Fortune 500 companies to leading global companies such as Kayak, Kingston and Headspace. The company scanned over a billion emails in its first year, and currently processes a similar volume every month and protects hundreds of thousands of mailboxes worldwide. So far, the company has helped stop attacks that could have caused losses of tens of millions of dollars to its customers. The company has about 34 employees, most of them in Israel. The capital raised will be used by the company for complex AI research, tripling the number of personnel in the company within a year and speeding up the development of the platform, against the background of the growing demand from organizations facing a sharp increase in the scope and complexity of AI-based attacks, and in view of the growing gap in the ability of existing solutions to deal with them.

Ocean Security defines a new category in the field of email security: an agent platform based on AI agents that investigate each email in real time, similar to a human security analyst. Instead of relying on identifying patterns or anomalies, the system analyzes the organizational context, the identity of the sender, the content and the links, and detects phishing and social engineering attacks, even when they appear completely normal. The agents operate on a large scale and perform a deep investigation of every incoming communication, while making real-time decisions that allow attacks to be stopped before they materialize. The platform operates in the cloud, connects in about 4 minutes to Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 environments through a built-in API, and begins to provide immediate value, including retrospective analysis of past communications and identification of threats that were not detected by the existing systems used by the organization. In addition, by automating complex investigation processes, Ocean significantly reduces the burden on security teams and saves organizations manpower.

Shay Schwartz, co-founder and CEO of Ocean Security: “In an age where artificial intelligence has made the most sophisticated attacks accessible to any attacker, the challenge no longer lies in identifying unusual patterns, but in understanding intent and context. We at Ocean are building a new layer of protection that understands communication like humans, and operates at the scale of a machine. Our goal is not only to stop attacks, but to restore to organizations the ability to trust their communications and act with confidence.”

Dodo Gosarski, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners: “We are looking for companies that are born in moments when the basic assumptions of the market are broken, and email security is at exactly such a moment. The scope and level of sophistication of attacks today require a rethink. Ocean stands out thanks to the deep AI technology it has developed, combined with a clear vision and a team with years of experience in both attack and defense. This combination places it in a unique position to build an AI and cyber company that will lead the market.”

Mike Faye, partner at Picture Capital: “The premise is clear – AI broke email security and gave attackers an unfair advantage overnight. What stood out especially about Ocean is that the team comes from the offensive side: they not only understand the threat map, they were the ones who designed it as attackers. AI is the ideal technology to solve the problem once and for all, it excels at understanding language, intent and context – exactly what that is required for an email security solution against phishing and social engineering. Ocean are the right team, at the right time.”