New York biometrics technology provider ID R&D has raised $5.7 million in Series A funding, reports Jane Connolly of Fintech Futures, Fintech’s sister publication.
The round was led by a new investor, GSR Ventures, with participation from an existing investor, Gagarin Capital. This is the New York-based company’s second investment; the first being a Seed round of an undisclosed amount raised in December of 2017.
The investment will be used to meet the increasing demand for its artificial intelligence (AI) based voice and behavioral solutions, along with voice and face anti-spoofing technologies. ID R&D will also be using it to add engineering staff and drive international sales.
“What we’ve consistently heard from our customers is that ID R&D’s technologies and solutions stand alone in offering a vastly simplified user experience that doesn’t sacrifice the security of authentication,” said ID R&D CEO, Alexey Khitrov.
The biometric tech provider aims to meet the demand from businesses for conversational interface (CI) and replace existing password and security question-based authentication processes with quicker, simpler voice and facial recognition solutions that require little or no involvement from the user.
The firm’s passive, anti-spoofing capabilities are designed to thwart fraudsters who attempt to access accounts using synthesized or recorded voices; or with photos, videos, or models of the real user’s face.
“With Grand View Research forecasting the speech and voice recognition market size to reach nearly $32 billion by 2025, businesses are racing to keep up with demand for authentication that works across multiple platforms and is as convenient as it is secure,” added Khitrov.
At FinovateFall 2018, Khitrov demoed SafeChat 2.0, an application that passively verifies a user’s identity throughout the conversation (typing or speaking) without asking a them to do anything special to authenticate themselves. In addition to SafeChat 2.0, the company offers IDVoice, a standalone version of ID R&D’s core voice biometric capability; IDSquared, a tool that validates the user by how they type their login credentials and by capturing their face at the same time; and IDBehave, a behavioral biometrics solution that creates a unique biometric template for each user.
ID R&D has seen rapid growth, doubling its sales contracts last year, growing its customer base by 25% in Q1 2019, doubling its staff, and opening a West Coast headquarters. The firm also added a major biometric integrator and a semiconductor company.
