Oak raises $60 million to fix identity security in the AI era

Israeli startup Oak has stepped out of stealth backed by $60 million in seed funding, raised late last year, with its product now generally available and already deployed by enterprise clients — though the company did not name them. Oak is positioning itself against outdated credentials and poor identity access management (IAM, the systems that control who and what can access company data), vulnerabilities that AI is expected to make easier for attackers to exploit. Oak calls itself AI-native, aiming to replace legacy IAM tools that had no consolidated alternative.

Tal Marom, Oak’s co-founder and chief product officer, said the startup spent months talking to 100 CISOs (chief information security officers) and IAM leaders before building its product: an AI connector framework that maps access to actual application usage and removes permissions that are no longer needed in real time, rather than only during periodic reviews. Co-founder Shai Morag described the gap it replaces: “Right now, the whole process is too manual, and it’s operations-based, not risk-based — for instance, there’s no trigger when an employee logs in from an unusual location.”

Morag is a cybersecurity veteran with three previous exits. He sold Secdo to Palo Alto Networks in 2018, and Tenable later acquired his cloud identity and security startup Ermetic for $265 million in 2023. Morag stayed on as Tenable’s chief product officer until CEO Amit Yoran became ill and passed away, after which Morag left the company. He then co-founded Oak with Marom, whom he had met at Tenable and who had previously worked at Salesforce. While in stealth, the two built a team of 50 people and are still hiring, particularly in the U.S., where a majority of Oak’s staff will soon be based, according to Morag.

Oak’s $60 million round was co-led by Accel, CRV, and Greylock Partners, with participation from AlphaDrive Ventures, Hetz Ventures, and angel investors. Accel partner Andrei Brasoveanu said Morag’s record was reason enough to back him again: Accel had led Ermetic’s Series A when it was pre-revenue, and after Tenable’s acquisition it offered to support whatever Morag built next, betting he could build something even bigger. Brasoveanu said he expects Oak will face plenty of competitors trying to use AI as a catalyst for change in the identity space.

Why it matters

Oak is emerging from stealth with an unusually large seed round to address identity management vulnerabilities that are expected to be exacerbated by AI agents — a bet that a founder with three prior cybersecurity exits can move fast enough to matter before rivals catch up.