Former Google Security Leaders Raise $36M to Deploy AI Against AI-Powered Phishing

AegisAI, a cybersecurity startup founded by two ex-Google security researchers, has closed a $36 million Series A funding round to address the exploding threat of AI-driven phishing campaigns targeting corporate email systems.

The Problem: AI Attacks Are Outpacing Defenses#

Attackers are weaponizing artificial intelligence to orchestrate phishing at scale, mining personal data about targets—their colleagues, ongoing projects, travel patterns—to generate highly convincing, personalized email messages that slip past conventional security tools. Traditional email defenses rely on rigid, rule-based logic that struggles to adapt quickly enough to these dynamically crafted threats. According to AegisAI's co-founder Cy Khormaee, AI-powered attacks now bypass existing security controls more than half the time, making them nearly twice as effective as older manual phishing campaigns.

Who's Behind It#

Khormaee and Ryan Luo, veterans of Google's Safe Browsing and reCAPTCHA teams, launched AegisAI less than a year ago. Drawing on a decade of experience defending Gmail—the world's largest email platform—they recognized that static security checklists couldn't match the sophistication of machine-learning-based attacks. Their solution: deploy AI agents that analyze incoming messages with human-like reasoning, flagging subtle anomalies that rules-based systems would overlook—including malicious PDFs disguised as legitimate files and attachments embedded with passwords or CAPTCHAs designed to evade standard filters.

Market Traction and Investor Backing#

The company has already secured customers including crypto payments firm Mash, AI platform LangChain, and Google-owned privacy compliance tool Lokker. The Series A, led by Battery Ventures with follow-on participation from prior backers Accel and Foundation Capital, brings AegisAI's total capital to $49 million. Dharmesh Thakker, the Battery partner overseeing the investment, emphasized the urgency: defending against AI-accelerated email threats has become a top-tier priority for enterprises, and he believes AegisAI's founder pedigree gives it a strong edge over competitors.

The Competitive Landscape#

AegisAI is not alone in pursuing AI-powered email defense. Lightspeed-backed Ocean and newer entrants like Abnormal Security are also attempting to displace incumbents such as Proofpoint and Mimecast. Yet Thakker argues that AegisAI's founding team's direct experience hardening Gmail positions them uniquely to dominate the next generation of email security.