From Teen Hacker to Iron Dome Innovator: How This Founder Secured $28M to Combat AI Phishing

Shay Shwartz possesses extensive knowledge about email phishing attacks. As a teenager, he made a living as a hacker; however, after being caught at 16, he recognized the potential to redirect his cyber skills towards preventing attacks instead of executing them.

He subsequently spent nearly ten years in prestigious cybersecurity positions, spearheading significant projects for Israel’s leading defense and intelligence agencies, including contributions to the Iron Dome initiative, before he joined Axis, a startup that was later acquired by HPE.

Throughout this journey, he harbored aspirations of launching his own startup, and two years ago, he finally took the leap.

His venture, Ocean, is an proactive email security platform designed to combat AI-enhanced attacks, and it has recently come out of stealth mode with a total funding of $28 million. The funding round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Picture Capital and Cerca Partners. Notable angel investors also contributed, including Wiz co-founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport, as well as Yevgeny Dibrov and Nadir Izrael, co-founders of Armis, which was recently sold to ServiceNow for $7.75 billion.

While established companies like Proofpoint and Mimecast, along with newer entrants like Abnormal Security, focus on detecting conventional phishing attacks, Shwartz (depicted here next to co-founder and CTO Oran Moyal) contends that AI necessitates a distinct defensive strategy.

Previously, only highly skilled hackers could successfully orchestrate spear-phishing attacks due to the extensive time, research, and manual effort required for targeted attacks.

“AI has automated the entire process, significantly expanding the scale,” Shwartz shared with TechCrunch. “I can instruct an LLM to gather detailed information about you, compile vast amounts of public data, and generate phishing attacks specifically aimed at you.”

Ocean asserts that its AI can meticulously assess the context of every incoming email to identify fraud and impersonation attempts.

The startup is currently analyzing billions of emails each month for clients, including Kayak, Kingston Technology, and Headspace.

Shwartz explained that Ocean developed a small language model designed to swiftly assess emails, grasp the sender’s intent, and measure it against the user’s specific organizational context.

“This is akin to having a guard at every door,” Shwartz stated. “This is how we ensure the inbox remains a secure space with high hygiene.”