Ocean raises $28M to combat AI phishing

From Teenage Hacker to Cybersecurity Expert

Shay Shwartz, who began his career as a teenage hacker, saw his trajectory change radically after his arrest at 16. Rather than continuing down that path, he chose to apply his skills to cybersecurity, focusing on preventing attacks. For about ten years, he held high-level positions in the field, working on major projects for Israel's elite defense and intelligence units, including the Iron Dome project. He then joined Axis, a startup that was acquired by HPE.

The Creation of Ocean

Driven by the desire to create his own company, Shwartz founded Ocean two years ago. This startup specializes in email security, specifically targeting AI-powered phishing attacks. Ocean has just emerged from stealth mode with a total funding of $28 million. This funding round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Picture Capital and Cerca Partners. Among the angel investors are Assaf Rappaport, co-founder and CEO of Wiz, as well as Yevgeny Dibrov and Nadir Izrael, co-founders of Armis, which was recently sold to ServiceNow for $7.75 billion.

A Unique Approach to AI Phishing

While established companies like Proofpoint and Mimecast, as well as newer players like Abnormal Security, help detect standard phishing attacks, Shwartz claims that artificial intelligence requires a different defensive approach. In the past, only highly skilled individuals could carry out spear-phishing attacks due to the time and effort involved. Today, AI has automated this process, enabling attacks on a much larger scale. "I can instruct a LLM to go understand exactly who you are, gather a large amount of public information, and create these highly targeted phishing attacks against you," he stated.

Ocean's Technology in Action

Ocean claims that its AI is capable of deeply analyzing the context of each incoming email to detect fraud and identity theft attempts. The startup is already examining billions of emails each month for clients such as Kayak, Kingston Technology, and Headspace. According to Shwartz, Ocean has developed a small language model that allows for rapid email analysis, understanding the sender's intent, and evaluating it against the user's specific organizational context. "It's like having a guard at every door," he added, emphasizing how this technology helps make inboxes safer.

The Role of Oran Moyal

Alongside Shwartz, Oran Moyal, co-founder and CTO of Ocean, plays a key role in developing this innovative technology. Together, they are working to enhance the security of electronic communications in the face of increasingly sophisticated threats.