Identity Verification Company Incode Hits Unicorn Status After $220M Series B

San Francisco-based Incode Technologies raised a $220 million Series B funding round, giving the company a $1.25 billion valuation—less than seven months after its $25 million Series A round.

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The round was led by General Atlantic and SoftBank, with additional investment from J.P. Morgan, Capital One, Coinbase and others. In total the company has raised approximately $257 million to date, according to Crunchbase data.

Incode is one of several companies trying to eliminate the hassles of real-life verification for things like online banking and e-commerce. The company’s AI-based digital identity platform uses biometrics and automated document verification to help facilitate verification of customers.

“We are reinventing the customer experience,” said Ricardo Amper, founder and CEO of Incode Technologies.

A different path

Before Incode was a unicorn, it started life as a photo-sharing app. However, the company developed an automated platform that used facial recognition and in 2018 saw a larger market in the identity management and authentication space.

The timing seemingly worked out for Incode, as real life identity management solutions have seen an increase in interest as more people moved their banking, buying and health needs online in the last two years due to the pandemic.

“COVID really accelerated everything,” Amper said.

The 100-person company decided to raise the large round after seeing increased traction this year—growing revenue 6x this year compared to last. That growth helped attract increasing investor interest.

“We have followed Incode for several years as the team has built a differentiated platform–underpinned by proprietary technology–and achieved strong traction and commercial success,” said Martín Escobari, co-president, managing director and head of Latin America at General Atlantic.

“We see exciting potential for Incode’s technology stack to further expand beyond the onboarding and authentication of customers into a myriad of other use cases and industries,” he added.

The authentication and identity space has exploded in recent years, and Incode faces competition from the likes of Onfido and Jumio, Amper said. However, Amper expects the identity market to grow to about $60 billion in the next two to three years, and without a large company currently dominating the space he sees room to grow and become a “Google-sized” company.

“I think there will be one or two or three winners in this space,” he said. “We can definitely be one.”

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias.