Oct 14, 2024

October 14, 2024 ID.me is enabling its employees and early investors to sell shares in a new deal that values the company at approximately $1.8 billion, reports Bloomberg. The valuation marks an increase from ID.me’s previous valuation of $1.73 billion established during a funding round two years prior. Prominent investors participating in this tender offer include Ribbit Capital, Viking Global, and CapitalG. The offer, which opened recently, is expected to close by November 1, allowing stakeholders an opportunity to liquidate shares within a specified timeframe. As part of this tender offer, $67 million has been made available to purchase shares from existing shareholders. ID.me itself is not selling any new shares at this time. This approach allows the company to provide liquidity to early investors and employees without diluting current ownership or seeking fresh capital. The tender offer comes amid speculation that ID.me may prepare for an initial public offering (IPO) in 2025 if market conditions prove favorable. The company reported revenue of $130 million last year, with expectations for substantial growth in the upcoming year. ID.me has attracted significant attention in recent years due to its role in assisting government agencies, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the company faced scrutiny in 2022 when a U.S. House committee alleged that ID.me may have misrepresented the extent of fraud within the U.S. unemployment insurance system. ID.me has continued to stand by its initial findings and asserts that its analysis of fraud data was accurate. ID.me also faced significant controversy with the IRS in that same year over its use of facial recognition technology for taxpayer identity verification. Initially, the IRS planned to require taxpayers to use ID.me’s facial recognition, sparking backlash from privacy advocates, government officials, and the public. Critics argued that the system was invasive and risked privacy violations, especially given ID.me’s use of one-to-many facial matching, which compares an individual’s face to a large database of images, increasing the potential for false matches. Congress launched a formal investigation that April. Nevertheless, the IRS has continued its partnership with ID.me. Earlier this year, it raised some eyebrows with a process directing users filing Freedom of Information Act requests to the digital identity verification service. Partners FaceTec’s patented, industry-leading 3D Face Verification and Reverification software anchors digital identity, creating a chain of trust from user onboarding to ongoing authentication on all modern smart devices and webcams. FaceTec’s 3D FaceMaps™ finally make trusted, remote identity verification possible. As the only technology backed by a persistent spoof bounty program and NIST/iBeta Certified Liveness Detection, FaceTec is the global standard for 3D Liveness and Face Matching with millions of users on six continents in financial services, border security, transportation, blockchain, e-voting, social networks, online dating and more. www.facetec.com AuthenticID provides 100% automated identity verification and fraud detection solutions that are leveraged by companies worldwide, including 2 of the top 3 U.S. Banks, 8 out the top 10 wireless providers in North America, and 2 of the 3 credit bureaus. Using proprietary computer vision and machine learning technology, these solutions help companies accurately verify the identity of their users across retail, digital and call center environments for onboarding and ongoing re-authentication events; KYC, IAM, and more. The solutions are easy to integrate and provide customers a large ROI by stopping fraud losses, increasing customer conversion at onboarding, reducing operational costs and allowing quick and cost-effective operational scalability, all while ensuring global privacy regulations are complied with. https://www.authenticid.com/ Decentralization of data is key for maintaining personal privacy, data protection and digital security. Yet, today’s solutions fall short. Centralized databases are prone to hacks and device-based solutions leave gaping security holes that fraudsters exploit. Anonybit goes to the root of the problem – how biometric data is stored and managed. Instead of building higher walls around centralized databases or storing biometrics on devices only to use passcodes as a fallback, we ask, what if there was no data to find? What if there was no biometric template to store? Welcome to Anonybit. The world’s first FULLY decentralized biometrics, where personal privacy meets digital security. https://anonybit.io/ Identity Week aims to be a significant identity industry catalyst. It’s our mission is to help accelerate the move towards a world where trusted identity solutions enable governments and commercial organisations to provide citizens, employees, customers and consumers with a multitude of opportunities to transact in a seamless, yet secure manner. All the while preventing the efforts of those intent on doing harm. https://identityweek.net/ The Biometric Digital Identity Prism is a market landscape framework designed to help influencers and decision makers understand, innovate, and implement digital identity technologies and solutions. This innovative framework for understanding and evaluating the rapidly evolving biometric digital identity marketplace is the only market model that is truly biometric-centric based on the foundational conviction that in the age of digital transformation the only true, reliable link between humans and their digital data is biometrics. https://www.the-prism-project.com ID R&D is an innovator of biometric facial liveness, document liveness, and voice biometrics. Ranked #1 by NIST, our patented passive approach to liveness, and specialized detection of voice clones, injection attacks and deepfakes, empowers KYC and authentication systems with fast, accurate and secure biometric verification technologies. Over 140 partners in more than 70 countries are collectively processing hundreds of millions of identity checks per year. ID R&D solutions easily integrate with mobile, web, messaging, smart speakers, set-top boxes, and IoT devices. Learn more: www.idrnd.ai