[DigitalToday reporter Chi-gyu Hwang] AI-based email security startup Ocean has come out of stealth mode and raised $28 million in funding.

Lightspeed Venture Partners, Picture Capital, Cerca Partners and angel investors participated in the round.

According to a recent report by SecurityWeek, Ocean, co-founded in 2024 by Shay Schwartz and Oran Moyal, developed a platform in which specialist AI agents inspect each incoming email.

The AI agents assess the sender’s intent, understand conversation context and review evidence from conversation history to detect threats. It comprehensively analyzes infrastructure, files, links, identity, financial requests and abuse-report mailboxes. It focuses on responding to sophisticated attacks such as business email compromise, vendor email compromise and AI-generated phishing.

It helps security teams automate triage of reported emails, releasing items from quarantine and incident handling. It also provides real-time guidance to employees who receive suspicious messages.

CEO Schwartz said, "The problem is no longer detecting malicious emails. It is finding malicious intent hidden inside messages that look completely normal." He said attackers use AI to write perfect sentences, mention real projects and impersonate trusted colleagues, making them almost impossible to distinguish. "Ocean replaces superficial filtering with AI agents, investigating every email, verifying context and identifying malicious intent at scale," he said.