AegisAI raises 36 million dollars to fight AI-powered phishing
Startup AegisAI, founded by former Google security managers, has raised 36 million dollars in a Series A round led by Battery Ventures to develop AI agents to combat targeted phishing attacks (spear phishing).
Startup AegisAI, founded by former Google security managers Cy Khormaee and Ryan Luo, has raised 36 million dollars in Series A funding. The round was led by Battery Ventures, with participation from existing investors Accel and Foundation Capital, bringing total funding for the company to 49 million dollars. AegisAI was founded last year and develops AI agents designed to detect targeted phishing attacks (spear phishing), which the company says attackers can generate faster and more convincingly with AI than before.
According to the co-founders, existing rule-based detection systems (based on “if-then” logic) are too slow and limited to handle attacks created using AI. AI agents from AegisAI are instead intended to analyze each message much as a human would and notice subtle anomalies, including malicious PDF attachments that appear legitimate and contain embedded passwords or CAPTCHA designed to trick standard spam filters. According to Khormaee, AI-driven attacks now bypass existing defenses in more than half of cases, almost twice as often as before.
The company says that dozens of customers deployed its technology within less than a year of launch, including payments company Mash, AI startup LangChain and Lokker (owned by Google), which focuses on privacy compliance. Other players are also active in the AI email security market, including Lightspeed-backed startup Ocean, which, like AegisAI, is trying to compete with established vendors Proofpoint and Mimecast as well as the newer Abnormal Security. According to investor Dharmesh Thakker from Battery Ventures, AegisAI is well positioned to become a leading company in this field thanks to the experience its founders gained securing Gmail. According to its founders, AegisAI plans to expand beyond email in the future, for example into data security.
Why it matters
For companies addressing email security, this signals that a new generation of tools based on AI agents is gaining traction in place of rule-based filters, which may influence vendor selection when renewing contracts with traditional players such as Proofpoint or Mimecast. At the same time, it confirms the trend of attackers themselves using AI to prepare more targeted and convincing fraudulent messages, increasing pressure on IT security teams across industries.
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