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

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

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

ID.me stated the Collection E financing will assist the Washington D.C.-area supplier tackle state-sponsored and well-funded risk actors utilizing deepfakes and stolen identities to penetrate authorities and company techniques, stated 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 needed 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 highway map, particularly, as a result of within the struggle towards AI-led fraud, the stakes have gotten so excessive,” Chief Monetary Officer Samantha Greenberg informed Data Safety Media Group.

ID.me, based in 2010, employs 1,116 folks and notched a valuation of $2 billion along 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 Different Resolution).

Why ID.me Goals to Create an Identification Verification Layer

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

“This is not your Nigerian prince e mail that has poor language, et cetera, that you simply obtained in your Hotmail account or AOL account,” Mills stated. “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 potential 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 techniques, utilizing each AI and human intelligence to counter AI-driven threats.

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

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

“We will 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 stated.

From Fee Wallets to Identification Wallets

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

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

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

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

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