Vice President of Operations
About the job
- 12-15+ years of operational leadership experience.
- Experience as a Vice President of Operations, Chief Operating Officer, General Manager, or senior partner at a top-tier management consulting firm transitioning into technology.
- Prior experience scaling a high-growth company through stages of approximately 50, 500, and 1,000 or more employees.
- Ability to discuss model precision, human-in-the-loop systems, the evolving threat landscape, and how artificial intelligence infrastructure impacts unit economics.
- Ability to identify streamlined, automated, and scalable solutions for ambiguous operational processes.
- Willingness to work hands-on on high-stakes, ambiguous challenges and take complete responsibility for them.
- Design, implement, and own the company’s core operating rhythms, including objectives and key results, quarterly business reviews, leadership meetings, and all-hands meetings.
- Build the infrastructure, processes, and key performance indicators needed to support hyper-growth.
- Translate long-term corporate strategy into actionable cross-functional operating plans.
- Ensure company-wide alignment and hold executive leaders accountable for delivering key milestones.
- Serve as the central hub between Product, Engineering, and Go-To-Market.
- Identify organizational silos and resolve systemic friction points in the agentic development cycle.
- Build scalable frameworks that enable technical and commercial teams to work in unison.
- Lead complex zero-to-one enterprise initiatives.
- Take ownership of critical operational gaps, including establishing new business functions, spearheading international expansion, or driving enterprise-scale Go-To-Market partnerships, until they are mature enough to hand off.
- Partner with the Chief Executive Officer on financial planning, budget allocation, and vendor management.
- Play a key operational role in future fundraising rounds by managing the data room and ensuring business metrics are investor-ready.
About the company
AegisAI builds proprietary large language models and autonomous defense agents to protect enterprise inboxes from AI-generated spear phishing, business email compromise, and evasive payloads. It integrates with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace via API, and uses Vanguard to follow suspicious links and attachments across the open web, while its LLMs analyze email content and metadata to detect threats and its agents intervene. This approach combines in-email detection with cross-web investigation, setting it apart from traditional inbox filters that look only at messages. The goal is to help enterprises prevent credential theft and phishing at scale by detecting, investigating, and blocking threats across email and allied web channels.
Company Size
11-50
Company Stage
Series A
Total Funding
$49M
Headquarters
New York City, New York
Founded
N/A
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- July 23, 2026 Series A from Battery added $36 million, total $49 million.
- AegisAI reports dozens of customers, including Mesh, LangChain, and Lokker.
- As of September 2026, Vanguard and enterprise go-to-market remain the funding targets.
What critics are saying
- Proofpoint, Mimecast, Abnormal, and Ocean already dominate enterprise email-security budgets.
- AegisAI has no published benchmark against incumbents, leaving false-positive economics unproven.
- If Microsoft or Google bundles similar detection, AegisAI becomes a feature, not a company.
What makes AegisAI unique
- Cy Khormaee and Ryan Luo bring Google reCAPTCHA and Safe Browsing pedigree.
- AegisAI's own LLMs analyze email intent, not static rules or signatures.
- Vanguard follows suspicious links and attachments beyond inboxes into live web destinations.
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Benefits
Flexible Work Hours
Growth & Insights and Company News
6 month growth
↓ -14%1 year growth
↓ -14%2 year growth
↓ -14%Upwind brings Aegis into company as AI Security Labs targets emerging AI threats. FinanceWire Sep. 23, 2026, 08:52 AM New York City, United States, September 23rd, 2026, FinanceWire The rapid adoption of AI agents and AI-powered workflows is creating a new layer of cybersecurity challenges, from the components that extend an AI system's capabilities to the credentials and access those systems can use. Upwind is expanding its response with the acquisition of AI security startup Aegis and the creation of a dedicated AI Security Labs initiative, as first reported by Axios. Aegis co-founders Omri Limor and Saar Ankonina will lead the new labs, which will focus on researching emerging AI security risks and developing capabilities across scanning, attack detection and AI security. The move brings Aegis's technology and team into Upwind as the cybersecurity company continues its work around cloud and AI environments. An Acquisition Built Through Collaboration Aegis was founded by Limor and Ankonina, who are both alumni of 8200. The two began their careers together in the intelligence unit focused on offensive cybersecurity and subsequently worked together in different roles before becoming peers. Following their time in the unit, they established Aegis around security problems emerging from AI infrastructure. The startup concentrated on sophisticated AI-generated attacks, including autonomous exploitation pipelines and large-scale credential harvesting. The founders initially approached Upwind about a strategic partnership and investment. The companies subsequently spent several months working together before Upwind acquired Aegis and established AI Security Labs. For Upwind, the acquisition provides a dedicated group focused on a part of cybersecurity that is changing alongside the development of AI itself. "AI security is developing extremely quickly, and by acquiring Aegis and bringing Omri and Saar on board, we are building a team that can move just as quickly," said Amiram Shachar, CEO and Co-Founder at Upwind. "The Aegis team brings a deep understanding of the challenges around securing agents, skills, and plugins, and by combining that expertise with Upwind's existing platform, we can move from research to real-world security capabilities much faster." The Security Layer Around AI Workflows AI agents can interact with applications, access information and execute tasks. Skills and plugins can further expand what those systems can do, but they also introduce additional components that organizations need to secure. That expanding attack surface will be one of the areas addressed by Upwind AI Security Labs. The initiative will research emerging risks and develop capabilities intended to identify and address them. Secret security will also be a key area of focus. Upwind pointed to industry findings involving API keys and session tokens being compromised and harvested at scale, highlighting the need for scanning both in transit and at rest across cloud and AI environments. The approach reflects Aegis's original focus on AI-specific security challenges. "We initially built Aegis as a startup to tackle the missing security layer around AI agents, skills and plugins," said Omri Limor, Co-Founder of Aegis. "After spending several months working together with Upwind, it became clear that joining forces through an acquisition and establishing AI Security Labs inside Upwind would allow us to move much faster and combine our technology with the capabilities Upwind has already built." Ankonina said joining Upwind would also provide the team with a way to scale its technology. "Integrating our technology directly into Upwind's platform gives us an immediate path to scale," added Saar Ankonina, Co-Founder of Aegis. "The establishment of AI Security Labs provides the ideal environment to accelerate research and protect enterprise AI workflows." A Team Designed to Expand The labs already have 12 developers and researchers from the two companies. Upwind expects the team to reach approximately 25 people within three months, with the potential to grow to 35 as the initiative develops. "We built AI Security Labs on the foundation of the Aegis acquisition with the ambition to create a significant research and engineering capability within Upwind," said Shachar. "We expect the team to grow from 12 people today to 25 and potentially 35 in the coming months, allowing us to expand our research and accelerate the development of new AI security capabilities." That growth is tied to a broader goal: shortening the distance between security research and deployable technology. As AI capabilities develop, new attack techniques can emerge quickly, creating pressure on security teams to identify risks and develop defenses without lengthy delays. From Emerging Research to Enterprise Security Upwind says AI Security Labs will combine the acquired Aegis technology and team with its existing platform and market strategy. The goal is to accelerate the development of security capabilities based on emerging AI risks and bring those capabilities into practical use. The initiative therefore represents an extension of Upwind's existing cloud and AI security mission rather than a standalone research effort. "As AI transforms both the threat landscape and the speed of modern cyber operations, this is the ideal moment to build, innovate, and lead in cloud and AI security," added Shachar. "With AI Security Labs, Upwind is reinforcing its mission to protect modern enterprise infrastructure and ensure organizations can safely embrace the next era of AI innovation." Contact. 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AegisAI has raised $36 million in Series A funding led by Battery Ventures, bringing total funding to $49 million since its founding less than a year ago. Accel and Foundation Capital also participated. The cybersecurity startup uses AI agents to detect sophisticated phishing attacks that bypass traditional rule-based security systems. Founded by former Google employees Cy Khormaee and Ryan Luo, the company mimics human analysis to identify subtle anomalies in incoming messages. AegisAI plans to expand beyond email security into broader data protection. Early clients include Mash, LangChain and Lokker. The company faces competition from specialised startups like Ocean and established cybersecurity vendors integrating their own AI capabilities.
AegisAI raises $36 million Series A led by Battery Ventures to fight the new wave of AI spear phishing. PR Newswire With AI-generated email attacks up 5x in a single year and FBI-reported cybercrime losses hitting a record $20.8 billion, former Google reCAPTCHA and Safe Browsing leaders are scaling the first defense built for a world where no employee and no amount of training can spot the lure SAN FRANCISCO, July 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ - AegisAI, the email security company building its own large language models (LLMs) to defend the inbox, today announced a $36 million Series A led by Battery Ventures, with participation from existing investors Accel and Foundation Capital, to fight the next generation of increasingly sophisticated, AI-powered email attacks, which are having devastating consequences for individuals and organizations. The round brings the company's total funding to $49 million, less than a year after the company emerged from stealth. AegisAI will use the funding to scale its fleet of autonomous defense agents, accelerate general availability of Vanguard, its agent that hunts threats beyond the inbox, and expand enterprise go-to-market. AI has enabled a new form of attack dubbed AI spear phishing. These attacks use LLMs to scan the internet for information about a victim and create highly targeted personalized lures designed to trick people into sharing sensitive data, downloading malware or sending money. This risk is turbocharged by the rising use of AI by individuals and workers. More widespread use of AI agents, which do work on someone's behalf without human involvement, creates a huge new attack surface for criminals, who may be able to operate undetected for long periods of time. AegisAI's technology works by leveraging intelligent language models and an orchestrated network of AI agents to analyze and act on email threats in real time, essentially fighting AI attacks with AI. The company's adaptive platform uses sophisticated reasoning to evaluate the specific intent of suspicious emails, instead of simply looking for patterns from past scams. This enables users to more quickly detect fraud, which is critical as the volume of email phishing has increased dramatically since the launch of ChatGPT. "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," said Cy Khormaee, co-founder and CEO of AegisAI. "You cannot patch human trust. If your security program still relies on template-based phishing tests and awareness training, you are training your people to spot last year's threat, not a capable agent crafting a novel lure just for them. When the attack is AI, the defense has to be AI."
AegisAI, a cybersecurity startup founded by former Google Safe Browsing and reCAPTCHA leaders Cy Khormaee and Ryan Luo, has raised $13 million in seed funding led by Accel alongside Foundation Capital. The company is developing AI-native email security to combat sophisticated threats that traditional rule-based systems struggle to detect. AegisAI deploys autonomous AI agents that analyse every aspect of an email to stop threats before they reach inboxes. The system continuously learns from real-world attacks and reduces false positives by 90% compared to legacy systems, according to the company. The startup has already secured customers including Mesh, Stelliant and Lokker. The funding will support product development, engineering team expansion and go-to-market efforts as AegisAI emerges from stealth mode.
AegisAI, an AI-native email security company backed by Accel and Foundation Capital, has released research showing AI-generated email attacks grew fivefold in 2025, now bypassing traditional security filters more than 50% of the time. The study analysed over 20,000 phishing, scam and malware emails, finding that AI-generated attacks are 75% more effective at evading traditional filters. In response, AegisAI is launching Project Vanguard, an autonomous defence AI agent that pursues threats hiding behind CAPTCHAs and cloaked pages. Built by the team behind Google's reCAPTCHA, Vanguard extends protection beyond the inbox by following suspicious links and attachments to their malicious destinations. The company, founded in 2025 by former Google security engineers, will demonstrate Vanguard at RSA Conference 2026, with early customer testing beginning later this year.