Phone-based fraud prevention company Pindrop Security received a major endorsement yesterday. The Atlanta-based company announced this week that it has received an investment from John Chambers, Executive Chairman at Cisco. The exact amount is undisclosed, but Chambers stated, “for me it’s sizable.” This marks the company’s fifth round of funding and brings its total raised to more than $123 million.
Also of note, Chambers, along with Andreessen Horowitz General Partner, Martin Casado, have joined Pindrop’s board of directors. Marc Andreessen, co-founder and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, has also joined as a board observer. Vijay Balasubramaniyan, CEO and co-founder of Pindrop, described how he plans to leverage the expertise of each new board member:
“John is going to help scale Pindrop to new heights, Marc is helping with our audacious vision, and Martin knows how to create and dominate a market. These three entrepreneurs have all created global ecosystems and will help accelerate our growth and expansion in the voice security and authentication market.”
Pindrop reported these 2016 milestones:
- Customer base doubled, revenues increased more than 100% year-over-year
- Clients include eight of the top 10 U.S. banks and two of the top five insurance carriers.
- Calls protected by Pindrop increased 500% year-over-year.
- More than 100 employees were added, bringing Pindrop’s total workforce to 255 employees
Founded in 2011, Pindrop debuted its Phoneprinting technology at FinovateFall 2012 in New York. The technology detects 80% of fraudulent calls into call centers and protects “hundreds of millions” of calls annually. In October of 2016, Pindrop announced a partnership with Lloyds Bank, the company’s first customer in Europe.