Founder raises $28M to fight AI phishing after Iron Dome research background

Shwartz spent about a decade in top-tier cybersecurity roles. He led major projects for Israel's elite defense and intelligence units, including work connected to the Iron Dome project, before joining Axis, which was later acquired by HPE. As a teenager he made money as a hacker but after getting caught at age 16 he decided to use his skills to prevent attacks rather than launch them. Two years ago Shwartz launched Ocean, an agentic email security platform to fight AI-powered attacks. The startup emerged from stealth mode with $28 million in total funding. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round, with participation from Picture Capital and Cerca Partners. High-profile angel investors joined the round, including Wiz co-founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport, as well as Yevgeny Dibrov and Nadir Izrael, the co-founders of Armis. Shwartz argues that while established vendors help detect standard phishing attacks, AI requires a different defensive approach. In the past only highly sophisticated hackers could pull off spear-phishing due to the time, research and manual labor needed. "AI just made the entire process automatic, so the scale is much, much bigger now," Shwartz told TechCrunch. Ocean claims its AI can thoroughly analyze the context of every incoming email to detect fraud and impersonation attempts. The startup built a small language model tailored to quickly analyze emails, understand the sender's intent and evaluate it against the user's specific organizational context. Ocean is already reviewing billions of emails each month for customers including Kayak, Kingston Technology and Headspace. "This is like having a guard in every door," Shwartz said. "This is how we make the inbox a safe place with high hygiene."