Ocean, an AI-powered email security startup founded by former Israeli defense researcher Shay Shwartz, raised $28 million in funding to combat AI-driven phishing attacks.

Ocean emerged from stealth with $28 million in total funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Picture Capital and Cerca Partners. Angel investors included Wiz co-founder Assaf Rappaport and Armis co-founders Yevgeny Dibrov and Nadir Izrael.

Ocean built a small language model to analyze incoming emails for fraud and impersonation by understanding sender intent and organizational context. The platform already reviews billions of emails each month for customers including Kayak, Kingston Technology, and Headspace.

Founder Shay Shwartz spent about a decade in Israeli defense and intelligence roles, including work connected to the Iron Dome project, before launching Ocean to address how AI has automated spear-phishing at scale.