AegisAI Raises $36M for AI Email Security

AegisAI announced Thursday that it raised $36 million in a Series A round led by Battery Ventures, with participation from Accel and Foundation Capital. The financing brings the startup’s total funding to $49 million and will fund expansion of its autonomous detection agents, preparation of its Vanguard agent for general availability, and growth of enterprise sales efforts.

The company was founded in 2025 by Cy Khormaee and Ryan Luo, who previously worked on Google’s security team and contributed to reCAPTCHA, Safe Browsing and Web Risk. AegisAI emerged from stealth in September 2025.

AegisAI’s platform is built around a network of AI agents that inspect incoming email for phishing, business email compromise and other threats. The system evaluates the intent and identity behind messages rather than relying on static rules or known-bad signatures.

The product integrates with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace through an API and does not require changes to a customer’s MX records, a detail the company says simplifies deployment for enterprise customers.

In March, AegisAI introduced Vanguard, a companion agent that opens suspicious links and attachments in a controlled environment like a human recipient would and then produces a threat report within minutes. The company says Vanguard and similar agents allow defenders to probe potentially malicious content without exposing staff to risk.

AegisAI describes a threat it calls AI spear phishing, in which language models research a target, map professional relationships and craft highly personalized lures at lower cost than manual campaigns. Khormaee, the company’s chief executive, warned: “The most immediate, catastrophic risk to your organization isn’t an AI agent hacking your firewall. It’s an AI model manipulating someone in your organization into handing over the keys, often through the most trusted, most vulnerable contact of the person it’s targeting. You cannot patch human trust.”

Khormaee also said that template-based phishing tests and awareness training do not address model-driven attacks and that automated defenses are required.

Investors in the round include Battery Ventures as lead, with participation from Accel and Foundation Capital. Company founders and backers say the new funding will support product development and expanded go-to-market activity as enterprises seek automated ways to detect sophisticated phishing and compromise attempts.