Craft Ventures led a Series B round of funding for SentiLink, a startup that provides identity verification technology. It raised $70million.Felicis Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, (a16z), and NYCA were also part of the financing. This brings the total amount raised by the company to $85 millions since its 2017 inception. The company did not disclose the amount raised and said that it was at a very high multiple to its 2019 $15 million Series B led by a16z.After their time as data scientists at Affirm where they developed the company's risk function, Max Blumenfeld and Naftali Harris founded SentiLink in late 2017. One time, during their tenure as installment loan providers, they encountered a bizarre fraud case in which 12 people applied for loans with the same name, date of birth, and 12 different Social Security numbers.Surprisingly, all 12 identities had credit reports and 750+ credit scores. They realized how difficult identity verification was, and they decided to invest in SentiLink with Affirm CEO Max Levchins.SentiLink, a San Francisco-based company, aims to assist financial institutions, lenders, and banks in detecting fraud at the point where it is applied through a real time API. These APIs can detect stolen and fake identities in new account applications. SentiLink will receive the application information from banks before issuing a new credit card. SentiLink's technology and models assess credit card applications for fraud risk, including identity theft or synthetic fraud. SentiLink will reject an application if it deems it high-risk.SentiLink has a partnership with over 100 financial institutions, three of which are among the top 10 in the U.S. Harris reports that SentiLink has processed more than 100 million applications and its revenue has grown by 5x in the past year.David Sacks, co-founder of Craft Ventures and general partner, said SentiLinks growth is among the fastest he's seen.He said that their traction with new startups and major U.S. banks was impressive. This is due to the team's deep understanding of identity and fraud. Talking with Max and Naftali, I discovered that fraud attacks are possible.Harris stated that the company was only a few months from profitability prior to its Series B, but realized the opportunity was too great to wait and grow slowly.It can be difficult to distinguish what makes one company unique from others in this space.Harris says that SentiLinks' greatest differentiation is its emphasis on deep understanding fraud and identity within our models.TechCrunch spoke to him that we have fraud investigators who manually review applications each day in search of fraud. We use their insights and discoveries in fraud models and technology. We value this deep understanding so much that each Friday, the whole company spends an hour reviewing fraud cases.Harris said SentiLink focuses on deep understanding fraud and identity and then using technology for productionalization. These discoveries include the discovery of fraud in the same name and the degrading of phone/name match data.SentiLink has a team risk analysts who are responsible for investigating new types of fraud and identifying fraudsters.Like many startups, SentiLink saw a rise in business during the COVID-19 pandemic.Fraud was rampant in the various government assistance programs. Harris stated that fraudsters who had stolen money from the government tried to use it as a cover for their crimes in the financial sector. Weve been busy with checking and saving accounts, which have seen relatively little fraud until now.The startup will use the new capital to expand its product line and hire. It currently has 25 employees and five offers have been accepted. The startup expects to reach 45-50 employees by the end of the year.Harris explained to TechCrunch that identity verification is complex and has many components. We plan to expand our product portfolio beyond the scoring API we started with. This will include investing in our product team and partnering with other companies. Acquisitions may also be part of it.The company will launch a KYC (Know Your Customer), solution at the end of September.Mike Marg, a Craft principal, stated that Harris and Blumenfeld's experience at Affirm was a strong indicator of their expertise on the subject.It is great when founders are able to share their knowledge or have an insight into a huge problem that others don't understand. SentiLink is one such example. Their rapid growth was a validation of the urgency and painstaking nature of the problem they solved for customers.Persona and Socure are two other companies that recently raised capital in the space of identity verification.
