AegisAI Raises $36 Million to Fight AI-Driven Spear Phishing

AegisAI was founded in 2025 by former Google security leaders Cy Khormaee and Ryan Luo, whose work included reCAPTCHA, Safe Browsing and Web Risk. The San Francisco startup builds autonomous AI agents and its own large language models to assess email context and detect spear phishing, business email compromise and evasive payloads that can bypass rule-based filters. Its pitch addresses a widening security gap as generative AI makes personalized reconnaissance and convincing malicious messages cheap to produce at scale.

On July 23, 2026, AegisAI announced a $36 million Series A led by Battery Ventures, with existing backers Accel and Foundation Capital participating, bringing total funding to $49 million. The company said it has deployed with dozens of fintech and technology customers since its public launch in September 2025, including Mesh, LangChain and Lokker. AegisAI research found AI-generated spear phishing rose from 2.8% to 13.9% of observed phishing in 2025, a fivefold increase in one year.