Socure, a company using AI and machine learning for identity verification, today announced that it has raised $450 million to fund its Series E round, which was led by Accel and T. Rowe Price.
This round increases the company's value to $4.5 billion from $1.3 billion in March, when it raised $100m for Series D.
Bain Capital, Tiger Global and Scale Venture Partners joined the round to become new investors. Commerce Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, and Sorenson Ventures were also present investors. This round brings the total amount of its funding to $646 Million since its inception in 2012.
Socure's identity solution engine uses predictive analytics to analyze over 8 billion records. This provides a multi-dimensional picture about a consumer's identity to detect fraud, even for those with difficult to identify populations such as Gen Z, credit-invisible, or newcomers to the country.
Socure has 12 top 15 banks as customers, along with a list of fintech companies, online gambling providers, and crypto exchanges such as Voyager and Public, Stash, DraftKings and Stash. TechCrunch spoke to Johnny Ayers, CEO of Socure, about 35% not working in the financial sector.
According to Ayers, the company will use the funds in two ways. To fulfill its mission to "verify 100 percent of good identities and eliminate identity fraud", and to expand its investments "across all aspects of the identity verification lifecycle," Ayers said. Ayers expects Socure to see rapid growth in its online gaming, cryptocurrency, and e-commerce market clients.
After the recent hiring of a new head for its public sector business, he said that Socure is expanding its partnerships and funding digital identity technology investments with federal and state government actors. Socure's use case is to verify identities in order to prevent fraud from unemployment. These cases cost the U.S. $400 billion in 2020.
This fundraise follows rapid growth in the industry of identity verification. As more companies do business online, there is a growing demand for fraud prevention and security solutions. Socure grew from 350 clients in March, mainly in financial services, and now serves nearly 1,000 customers in a wider range industries.
Aaron Webster, Socure's chief risk officer, shared his views on the differences between Socure and its competitors in a written statement with TechCrunch.
"Most of the players in this space have created point solutions for one aspect of digital identification - name, address and device or phone number. But they lack the data science insights of Socure’s Sigma+ score which definitively and reliably answers two questions with their multivariate data. 'Is applicant a real person? Webster asked, "Is the applicant really who they claim to be?"
CEO Ayers confirmed that Socure was considering going public.
Ayers stated that the IPO preparations process is aimed at putting Ayers in a position "where we have all our ducks in a row in 2023." "We will definitely come to market here within the not-too distant future."
