TypingDNA raises USD 7 million to improve typing biometrics adoption worldwide.
GapMinder makes a follow-on in Series A investment of USD 1.2 million in TypingDNA, after leading a USD 1.5 million Seed Round, in November 2018.
Typing biometrics will enable existing applications such as authentication, fraud detection, password recovery, and online education assessment to fingerprint users more securely than traditional forms of two-factor authentication.
Behavioural-biometrics company TypingDNA announces today that it raised a USD 7 million Series A round led by Gradient Ventures, Google’s AI-focused venture fund, with the participation of GapMinder Ventures and Techstars Ventures, as well as other prior investors.
GapMinder invested USD 1.2 million as part of Series A round. In November 2018, TypingDNA obtained a previous investment of USD 1.5 million from a GapMinder lead Seed Series, with the participation of other investors from the United States, Great Britain, and Romania.
TypingDNA has developed proprietary artificial intelligence algorithms to authenticate users based on how they type. Through a simple training process of watching user keystrokes, TypingDNA can recognize further attempts from a specific user by matching them against their known account. This technology, known as typing biometrics, will enable existing applications such as authentication, fraud detection, password recovery, and online education assessment to fingerprint users more securely than traditional forms of two-factor authentication.
“Advancing the research and distribution of typing biometrics is of global importance. Keyboards are incorporated in almost any device today, making typing behavior the most widely available user biometric. This round of funding will allow us to further our mission to provide user-friendly, non-intrusive biometrics and increased security to people around the world,” said Raul Popa, CEO, and Co-founder at TypingDNA.
TypingDNA’s Authentication API accepts user keystrokes in a standardized and open-sourced format allowing simple and easy integration into any desktop or mobile application. Developers can implement TypingDNA’s API as a passive two-factor authentication option, password recovery method, or simply to ensure inputs are matched to a given user. TypingDNA’s mobile developer SDK also currently supports the latest version of iOS and Android applications.
TypingDNA is currently ACE compliant for verifying students online, and European Banking Authority considers typing biometrics to be compliant for SCA regulation (2FA in banking and payments in EU), as a consequence the company is experiencing great demand from the industry.
TypingDNA plans to use this new investment to expand its developer support network and offer more tools to integrate their API with existing website development platforms.
“We’re excited about TypingDNA’s developer-first approach to enable people to authenticate securely based on how they type,” said Darian Shirazi, General Partner at Gradient Ventures. “With global regulation impacting face-recognition-based authentication and hackers targeting SMS-based two-factor authentication, typing biometrics is the best form of identifying people without compromising privacy or security.”
“TypingDNA is revolutionary in the authentication area. Its state of the art proprietary technology allows second factor or multifactor authentication based on typing biometrics in a highly reliable, and non-compromising way. And all these in a non-expensive way and easily interacting with existing systems or applications. Their recently launched mobile product is unique in the market and comes as complementary to the existing TypingDNA API.
We are excited about TypingDNA’s vision and evolution, and are comfortable to further support their international hyper-growth, beyond the current USD 8.5 million financing raised by TypingDNA in Seed and Series A rounds” declares Dan Mihaescu, Founding Partner of GapMinder.
Since January 2018, when it was created, until now, GapMinder invested in 31 companies and reached a threshold of EUR 40 million as fund size.
About GapMinder Venture Partners BV
GapMinder is a 45 Million dollar venture capital fund investing in high technology companies born in Romania and Central Europe and scaling-up at an international level, at Seed or Series A-stages. GapMinder’s partners have a hands-on approach as investors, enhancing companies’ growth via strategic advisory and direct involvement in operational streamlining, corporate governance and financial discipline.
GapMinder’s portfolio includes companies such as FintechOS, TypingDNA, SmartDreamers, Deepstash, Frisbo.
The fund is co-financed through the Competitiveness Operational Program 2014-2020.
About TypingDNA
TypingDNA, with offices in New York, US, and Oradea, Romania, and founded in 2016, offers a variety of developer-first solutions helping companies recognize people by the way they type. The company started out of EU (Romania) where it won prestigious awards and recognition, and opened offices in New York in 2018, backed by Techstars. TypingDNA previously raised a $1.5M seed round from investors on three continents, including founders of unicorn companies such as UiPath and DataDog, and now has clients and partners around the world.
About Gradient Ventures
Gradient Ventures is Google’s AI-focused venture fund – investing in and connecting early-stage startups with Google’s resources, innovation, and technical leadership in artificial intelligence. The fund focuses on helping founders navigate the challenges in developing new technology products, allowing companies to take advantage of the latest techniques so that great ideas can come to life. Gradient was founded in 2017 and is based in Palo Alto, California. For more information, visit www.gradient.com.
About the European Investment Fund
European Investment Fund (EIF) is part of the European Investment Bank Group and is the main venture capital for SMEs in Europe, via venture capital instruments, guarantees, and microfinance. In Romania, the EIF implements financial instruments funded through structural and investment funds: JEREMIE 2007-2013, SME Initiative, and financial instruments from PO Competitiveness, Regional Operational Program, and NRDP.
About the Competitiveness Operational Program
The Competitiveness Operational Program 2014-2020 (POC) supports investments to meet the needs and challenges of low levels of economic competitiveness, in particular with regard to (a) insufficient support for research, development, and innovation and (b) infrastructure developed by Technology Information and Communication. POC benefits from a € 1.33 billion allocation from the European Regional Development Fund.