Backed by $60M in funding, Oak comes out of stealth to fix the identity mess made worse by AI agents

Physical badges were all you needed to manage identity in a company. But with humans now working alongside machines and AI agents in digital environments, even identity tools designed for the cloud age have proven inadequate.

This is the emerging Israeli gap oak She says she’s coming out of stealth to fill the void. The company, co-founded by serial entrepreneur Shai Morag, has built a unified control plane that governs identity across the enterprise, and is now going public with its generally available product already deployed by enterprise customers, with support from 60 million dollars In the seed funding it raised late last year.

The company did not reveal the names of the customers, but said its solution is already generally available and being deployed by enterprise customers.

Outdated credentials and weak identity access management — or IAM, the systems that control who and what can access company data — is a common security vulnerability, one that AI is expected to make easier for attackers to exploit. Oak also calls itself AI-native, positioning itself as an alternative to legacy tools that were already showing their limitations but had no unified replacement.

According to Oak’s other co-founder, chief product officer Tal Marom, the startup spent months talking to 100 CISOs and IAM leaders before building its product: an AI-powered connective framework that identifies access to actual app usage and removes permissions that are no longer needed in real time, not just during periodic reviews.

“Right now, the whole process is very manual, and it’s process-based, not risk-based — for example, there’s no reason when an employee logs in from an unusual location,” said Morag, a former Army major who spent more than two decades in cybersecurity. During that period, he had three exits, including sale Internet startup Secdo to Palo Alto Networks in 2018.

This track record has helped Oak raise what is considered a very large round by local standards, one that is consistent with its plans to invest heavily in R&D and growth, Morag said. “Our vision is to be born as a giant,” he told TechCrunch.

Morag’s CV already includes a stint in a giant organisation. After his cloud identity and security startup Ermetic were acquired by public electronics company Tenable $265 million In 2023, he remains as CPO. But after CEO Amit Yoran and… He diedMorag left and told his wife he was retiring.

Instead of stepping back, Morag co-founded Oak with Marom, a production team leader he met at Tenable who previously held similar roles at Salesforce and in the Israeli military. While in secret, the two have also built a team of 50 people and are actively hiring, especially in the United States, where the majority of Oak’s employees will soon be based, Morag said.

Oak’s $60 million round was led by Accel, CRV and Greylock Partners, with participation from AlphaDrive Ventures, Hetz Ventures and angel investors. Morag told TechCrunch that venture capital interest has been strong from the beginning.

Accel partner Andre Brasovino said Morag’s record alone was a strong argument. Accel was leading Ermetic Series A When it was before revenue; When Tenable acquired it, Accel made Morag an informal, standing offer to support whatever he would build next, Brasovino said. “I knew he had the potential to build another company, but this time bigger and better.”

Considering AI a “democratizing force,” Accel supports founders right out of high school, Brasovino said. But when it comes to identity management, experience still matters. “There’s complexity in the product, and there’s also complexity in the organizations you have to navigate to figure out how to sell something like this,” he said.

Both Brasovino and Morag expect Oak to face a lot of competitors trying to use AI as a catalyst for change in a space where vendor lock-in is deepening. This makes it crucial for Oak to expand quickly. “I’m going to expand or go home,” says Morag, who has told his wife this will be his last company, that he won’t retire until he gives it everything he has.

Pictured above, from right to left: Morag Tea and Marum Hill.