AegisAI, a startup that uses AI agents to detect and block AI-generated phishing emails, raised a $36 million Series A in July 2026, bringing its total funding to $49 million. The round was led by Battery Ventures, with participation from existing backers Accel and Foundation Capital.
The company was founded last year by Cy Khormaee and Ryan Luo, former Google security executives who previously worked on safe browsing technology and reCAPTCHA. Their core argument is that traditional rule-based email security systems — built on “if-then” logic — are too slow and too rigid to catch the personalized, AI-crafted attacks now targeting inboxes at scale.
Instead of checklists, AegisAI’s agents analyze each incoming message the way a human reviewer would, looking for subtle anomalies that standard filters miss. The system can flag threats such as malicious PDF attachments that appear legitimate, including those protected by built-in passwords or CAPTCHAs — techniques commonly used to evade spam filters.
“AI-powered attacks bypass existing controls more than half the time now, which means they’re almost twice as effective as they used to be,” Khormaee told TechCrunch. “They’ve researched you, they understand everything about you, and they’re targeting attacks that are perfectly bespoke to you.”
Less than a year after launch, AegisAI says its technology has been adopted by dozens of customers, including crypto payments company Mesh, AI startup LangChain, and privacy compliance platform Lokker.
Dharmesh Thakker, general partner at Battery Ventures, said the investment was driven by a surge in AI-assisted email attacks. “Defending against that is going to be a number one priority for a lot of companies,” he told TechCrunch. AegisAI competes with players including Abnormal Security, Proofpoint, and Mimecast, as well as Lightspeed-backed Ocean.
While AegisAI is currently focused on email security, Khormaee said the company intends to expand into other areas, including data security, as it builds out its agent-based platform.
Source: TechCrunch