Email security startup Ocean ends its stealth mode and announces $28 million in total funding. The company positions its product as an AI-powered email security platform focused on combating targeted phishing and impersonation attacks amplified by generative AI.
Lightspeed raises funding
This round of funding was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Picture Capital and Cerca Partners. Several angel investors from the security industry also joined, including Assaf Rappaport, co-founder and CEO of Wiz, and Yevgeny Dibrov and Nadir Izrael, co-founders of Armis.
TechCrunch reports that Ocean was founded by Shay Shwartz, who began his career as a hacker, was caught at age 16, and subsequently transitioned into cybersecurity, where he worked on multiple projects within Israel’s defense and intelligence sectors and later joined Axis, a startup acquired by HPE.
Targeting AI-amplified email attacks
Schwartz believes that traditional email security vendors have already been able to handle a large volume of routine phishing emails, but AI is changing the nature of attacks. In the past, targeted phishing typically required attackers to invest significant time gathering information, researching targets, and manually crafting content, making it a high-barrier endeavor.
With the widespread adoption of large models, this process has become significantly automated. Attackers can leverage AI to collect publicly available information, analyze target identities, and quickly generate email content that closely matches the context of individuals or organizations, thereby expanding the scale of attacks.
Custom small model to detect impersonation behavior
Ocean stated that its system analyzes the context of every incoming email to detect fraud and impersonation. Shwartz said the company developed a small language model tailored for email scenarios to quickly determine the sender's intent and cross-reference it with internal enterprise context.
Following this approach, the system does not only analyze the email content itself but also considers the context of the recipient’s organization to determine whether the content is anomalous. Ocean aims to enhance email security and reduce the risk of AI-driven email attacks.