From teen hacker to Iron Dome researcher: founder raises $28M to build AI-powered email security platform

Shay Shwartz knows email phishing from both sides. As a teenager, he made money as a hacker — until he was caught at age 16. That turning point led him to use his skills defensively, eventually spending a decade in elite Israeli defense and intelligence units, including work tied to the Iron Dome missile defense system. Now, two years after founding his own startup, he is stepping into the spotlight with a $28 million funding round to combat a new wave of AI-generated email threats.

From Iron Dome to inbox defense

Shwartz’s journey is unusual even by cybersecurity standards. After his teenage hacking stint, he shifted to defensive roles, leading major projects for Israel’s top cyber units. He later joined Axis, a startup later acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. But the itch to build his own company never faded. In 2023, he launched Ocean, an agentic email security platform designed specifically to counter AI-powered phishing attacks.

The company emerged from stealth mode with $28 million in total funding. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round, with participation from Picture Capital and Cerca Partners. The investor list also includes high-profile angel investors: Wiz co-founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport, and Armis co-founders Yevgeny Dibrov and Nadir Izrael — the latter company recently sold to ServiceNow for $7.75 billion.

Why AI phishing requires a new approach

Traditional email security vendors like Proofpoint and Mimecast, along with newer players like Abnormal Security, are effective against standard phishing. But Shwartz argues that generative AI has fundamentally changed the threat landscape. In the past, spear-phishing required significant manual research and effort, limiting its scale. AI automates the entire process.

“AI just made the entire process automatic, so the scale is much, much bigger now,” Shwartz told Bitcoin World. “I can instruct LLM to go and understand exactly who you are, harvest large amount of public information, and create those phishing attacks very targeted against you.”

Ocean claims its platform uses a small language model — not a massive general-purpose LLM — to analyze the context of every incoming email. It evaluates the sender’s intent against the recipient’s organizational role, communication history, and typical behavior patterns. The system is already processing billions of emails monthly for customers including Kayak, Kingston Technology, and Headspace.

How agentic security differs from traditional filters

Traditional email filters rely on rules, reputation scoring, and known threat signatures. Ocean’s approach is agentic: the system actively reasons about each email’s context rather than matching it against a database of known attacks. Shwartz describes it as “a guard in every door.” The model is trained to detect impersonation, social engineering, and subtle anomalies that indicate an AI-generated attack, even if the email contains no malicious links or attachments.

Market implications and competitive landscape

The email security market is crowded, but AI-powered threats are creating a new category of defense. According to the 2024 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, phishing remains the most common vector for initial access, and AI-generated phishing emails are becoming harder to distinguish from legitimate messages. Ocean’s funding round, backed by prominent cybersecurity founders, signals that investors see agentic security as a necessary evolution.

Shwartz’s background — from hacker to Iron Dome researcher to founder — gives the company a credibility that matters in the security industry. His co-founder and CTO, Oran Moyal, brings additional technical depth. The company plans to use the funding to expand its engineering team and accelerate product development.

Conclusion

Ocean’s emergence reflects a broader shift in cybersecurity: as attackers adopt AI, defenders must do the same. Shwartz’s personal story — from teenage hacker to building a platform backed by some of the most successful founders in Israeli cybersecurity — adds a compelling narrative to a serious technological challenge. Whether Ocean can carve out a significant share of the email security market remains to be seen, but its approach and backing suggest it is a company worth watching.

FAQs

Q1: What makes Ocean different from existing email security platforms?
Ocean uses a proprietary small language model to analyze the context of each email, focusing on sender intent and organizational behavior, rather than relying on rules or known threat signatures. This is designed to catch AI-generated spear-phishing attacks that traditional filters may miss.

Q2: How much funding has Ocean raised and who invested?
Ocean raised $28 million in total funding, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Picture Capital and Cerca Partners. Angel investors include Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport and Armis co-founders Yevgeny Dibrov and Nadir Izrael.

Q3: Is Ocean currently available for businesses?
Yes, Ocean is already processing billions of emails per month for customers including Kayak, Kingston Technology, and Headspace. The company emerged from stealth mode with the funding announcement and is actively onboarding new clients.