AegisAI raises $36M to combat AI-driven spear phishing attacks with human-like email analysis

Jul 23, 2026

Email security startup AegisAI raised $36 million in a Series A funding round led by Battery Ventures, bringing its total funding to $49 million. Founded in 2025 by former Google security executives Cy Khormaee and Ryan Luo, the company uses autonomous AI agents to analyze emails for phishing threats. Co-founder Cy Khormaee said AI-powered attacks now bypass existing security controls more than half the time, while an AegisAI study cited by SiliconANGLE found that AI-generated spear-phishing rose from 2.8% to 13.9% of the phishing emails the company observed during 2025. AegisAI says its technology has been adopted by dozens of customers, including Mesh, LangChain, and Lokker, and plans to expand beyond email into data security.

AegisAI Series A funding

▪The Series A funding round brings AegisAI's total funding to $49 million.
▪Former Google security executives Cy Khormaee and Ryan Luo founded AegisAI in 2025.
▪AegisAI raised $36 million in a Series A funding round led by Battery Ventures.
▪Existing investors Accel and Foundation Capital participated in AegisAI's Series A funding round.

AI-driven spear phishing threats

▪According to FBI figures reported by SiliconANGLE, business email compromise accounted for $11.64 billion of the record $20.8 billion in internet-crime losses reported by victims in 2025.
▪AegisAI co-founder Cy Khormaee said AI-powered attacks now bypass existing security controls more than half the time.
▪According to an AegisAI study cited by SiliconANGLE, AI-generated spear-phishing rose from 2.8% of the phishing emails AegisAI observed in early 2025 to 13.9% by the end of the year.

Contextual email analysis technology

▪AegisAI claims its technology can detect malicious PDF attachments containing built-in passwords and CAPTCHAs used to bypass standard spam filters.
▪AegisAI deploys autonomous AI agents inside the inbox that analyze the intent and identity of each message to detect subtle anomalies.
▪In March 2026, AegisAI introduced Vanguard, a threat-hunting agent that analyzes suspicious links and attachments on the open web.
▪AegisAI claims its inbox agents reduce false positive alerts by up to 90% compared to legacy security tools.

Early customer adoption

▪Less than a year after its launch, AegisAI says its technology has been adopted by dozens of customers, including Mesh, LangChain, and Lokker.
▪AegisAI says its agents detected an attack at privacy company Lokker that was routed through a vendor's compromised Salesforce systems and contained no malicious link or attachment.

Competitive security market

▪Battery Ventures general partner Dharmesh Thakker states that AegisAI's founders' experience protecting Gmail gives the startup a competitive advantage.
▪AegisAI competes in the email security market against Ocean, Proofpoint, Mimecast, and Abnormal Security.

Data security expansion plans

▪AegisAI plans to use its new funding to scale its roster of defense agents and push toward general availability for its Vanguard threat-hunting agent.
▪AegisAI plans to expand its adaptive AI agent technology beyond email to protect other areas of digital defense, including data security.