In the past, physical badges were sufficient for identity management in a company. But as humans now work alongside machines and AI agents in digital environments, even identity tools designed for the cloud era are proving inadequate.
This is the gap between Israeli startups Oak comes out of stealth to fill, he said. Co-founded by serial entrepreneur Shai Morag, the company has quietly built a unified control plane that governs identity within an organization, and is now emerging publicly with its product generally available and already deployed by enterprise customers, backed by 60 million dollars in the seed funding it raised late last year.
The company did not disclose the names of its customers, but said its solution is already widely available and deployed by enterprise customers.
Outdated credentials and poor identity access management – or IAM, the systems that control who and what can access company data – are a common security vulnerability, which AI should make even easier for attackers to exploit. Oak also calls itself AI-native, positioning itself as a replacement for existing tools which already showed their limits but did not have a consolidated alternative.
According to Oak’s other co-founder, Tal Marom, chief product officer, the startup spent months talking with 100 CISOs and IAM managers 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.
“Right now, the whole process is too manual and is operations-based, not risk-based. For example, there is no trigger when an employee logs in from an unusual location,” said Morag, a former Army major who spent more than two decades in cybersecurity. During this period, he had three releases, including sale the cyber startup Secdo at Palo Alto Networks in 2018.
That track record helped Oak raise what is a very large funding round by local standards, which fits 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 resume already includes a stint at a giant organization. After public cybersecurity company Tenable acquired its cloud identity and security startup Ermetic for $265 million in 2023, he remains CPO. But after CEO Amit Yoran fell ill and diedMorag left and told his wife that he would retire.
Instead of stepping back, Morag co-founded Oak with Marom, a product team leader he’d met at Tenable and who had previously held similar roles at Salesforce and the Israeli military. While maintaining a low profile, the two men have also built a team of 50 people and are actively recruiting, particularly in the United States, where the majority of Oak’s staff will soon be based, Morag said.
Oak’s $60 million round was co-led by Accel, CRV and Greylock Partners, with participation from AlphaDrive Ventures, Hetz Ventures and angel investors. Morag told TechCrunch that venture capital interest was strong from the start.
Accel partner Andrei Brasoveanu said Morag’s track record alone was a strong argument. Accel had led the Ermetic team Series A when it came to pre-income; When Tenable acquired it, Accel made Morag an informal standing offer to support whatever it built next, Brasoveanu said. “I knew he had the courage to build another company, but this time even bigger and even better.”
With AI as a “democratizing force,” Accel supports founders right out of high school, Brasoveanu said. But when it comes to identity management, experience always counts. “There’s a complexity in the product, and there’s also a complexity in the organizations that you have to navigate to figure out how to sell something like that,” he said.
Both Brasoveanu and Morag expect Oak to face many competitors trying to use AI as a catalyst for change in a space where vendor lock-in runs deep. It is therefore essential for Oak to evolve quickly. Morag, who told his wife this would be his last venture, says he won’t retire until he’s given everything he’s got: “I’m going to go big or go home.”
Photo above, from right to left: Shai Morag and Tal Marom.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This does not affect our editorial independence.
Anna Heim is a writer and editorial consultant.
You can contact or check Anna’s outreach by emailing annatechcrunch [at] gmail.com.
As a freelance journalist at TechCrunch since 2021, she has covered a wide range of startup topics, including AI, fintech and insurance, SaaS and pricing, and global venture capital trends.
Since May 2025, his reporting for TechCrunch has focused on Europe’s most interesting startup stories.
Anna has moderated panels and conducted on-stage interviews at industry events of all sizes, including major technology conferences such as TechCrunch Disrupt, 4YFN, South Summit, TNW Conference, VivaTech and many others.
Former LATAM & Media editor at The Next Web, startup founder and Sciences Po Paris alumna, she speaks several languages fluently, including French, English, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese.
