ID.me Will get $340M in Collection E to Scale, Deal with Deepfake Fraud

A digital identification supplier led by a former U.S. Military rifle platoon chief raised $340 million on a $2 billion valuation to combat AI-powered fraud.

See Additionally: Id and Entry Administration (IAM) Market Information 2025

ID.me mentioned the Collection E financing will assist the Washington D.C.-area supplier tackle state-sponsored and well-funded menace actors utilizing deepfakes and stolen identities to penetrate authorities and company programs, mentioned Chief Income Officer Chris Mills. ID.me plans to speculate aggressively in R&D, new verification merchandise, and increasing the breadth of its orchestration layer and sign intelligence.

“We wished to make sure that the corporate is extraordinarily well-capitalized in order that we will proceed to put money into our product, accelerating our product and engineering street map, specifically, as a result of within the combat in opposition to AI-led fraud, the stakes have gotten so excessive,” Chief Monetary Officer Samantha Greenberg informed Info Safety Media Group.

ID.me, based in 2010, employs 1,116 folks and notched a valuation of $2 billion together with the corporate’s newest funding spherical, up from the valuation related to ID.me’s Collection D spherical in 2023. The corporate has been led since its inception by Blake Corridor, who served as a rifle platoon chief within the U.S. Military from 2004 to 2008, led over 450 fight patrols in Iraq and obtained two bronze stars (see: Replace: Amid IRS’ Pullback, ID.me Affords Various Resolution).

Why ID.me Goals to Create an Id Verification Layer

Organizations are realizing they typically lack even primary identification documentation – corresponding to images or biometrics – of staff post-onboarding, Mills mentioned. ID.me goals to create a complete identification layer that spans from recruiting to long-term employment, serving to corporations confirm not solely who they rent however who continues to entry their programs months later.

“This is not your Nigerian prince electronic mail that has poor language, et cetera, that you simply received in your Hotmail account or AOL account,” Mills mentioned. “That is exhibiting up with Americans’ stolen PII they’ll get off the darkweb. They will instantly take over the voice and your facial recognition.”

Nation-state actors, significantly from China, are leveraging deepfake applied sciences and stolen private information to scale assaults in ways in which weren’t doable earlier than. To remain forward, ID.me should frequently put money into superior fraud detection, biometric verification and orchestration applied sciences. The corporate is doubling down on human-in-the-loop programs, utilizing each AI and human intelligence to counter AI-driven threats.

“We have to sustain,” Mills mentioned. “They’re utilizing AI, and we have to make investments and proceed creating our assets to combat the development of AI there with a few of not solely the most important businesses, but additionally the most important firms within the nation.”

Particularly, Mills mentioned ID.me goals to create an identification verification layer that stretches throughout your entire employment lifecycle, integrating with over 300 current platforms utilized by enterprises. The corporate’s imaginative and prescient is to forestall account takeovers, validate worker entry over time and supply enterprises with steady assurance that the folks inside their networks are professional, Mills mentioned.

“We are able to assure that you’re who you say you’re, and actually, present extra safety to these CISOs round who is definitely of their group,” Mills mentioned.

From Cost Wallets to Id Wallets

Simply as cost wallets corresponding to Apple Pay and Google Pay digitized monetary interactions, identification wallets will digitize and safe how we show who we’re on-line and offline, Mills mentioned. ID.me views scale and belief as vital to changing into the de facto supplier of identification verification, particularly in authorities and huge enterprise partnerships the place danger mitigation is paramount, Mills mentioned.

“If you wish to grow to be the digital pockets normal of the USA, you have to have the dimensions to point out these entities that you’ll maintain and you’re going to make it for the lengthy haul,” Mills mentioned. “[The Series E round] is a giant, important quantity that decreases the danger profile for a few of these very giant entities taking a look at investing in ID.me.”

ID.me is taking over the epidemic of fraudulent companies utilizing shell firm registrations to say advantages like unemployment insurance coverage, Mills mentioned. He mentioned conventional instruments like EIN verification are inadequate, prompting ID.me to construct new organizational verification applied sciences that embody each automated checks and guide analysis, like scouring web sites and LinkedIn profiles.

ID.me has needed to mix guide analysis together with handle lookups, internet searches and LinkedIn checks with superior backend integrations to confirm legitimacy. Mills sees this as a needed funding to develop ID.me’s position from particular person to institutional identification verification, which is particularly related in state-level unemployment and advantages programs the place pretend companies are a rampant assault vector.

“We thought utilizing our capabilities to do integrations and APIs, we may simply get EINs,” Mills mentioned. “Sadly, 40% of companies can’t be recognized simply with EIN, so it wasn’t simply constructing an integration. We have now to truly do some product work, in addition to guide interventions, to truly decide if a enterprise is legitimate or not. And in order that’s further funding and capabilities required to try this.”