Vouched, the Seattle startup that uses AI to help companies verify identity, raised $17 million in new funding.
The Series A round was led by Spring Rock Ventures.
Vouched’s software has traditionally worked by analyzing images of photo identity documents such as driver’s licenses. The technology compares a user’s selfie to confirm identity, while also looking for signs of tampering, examining addresses and checking everything against databases. The idea is to provide fraud detection of a person in real-time.
But CEO Peter Horadan said investor interest was driven by a “new future of identity” that he says is coming and will drive profound changes in the way that we all do business together.
The first is mobile driver’s licenses — currently available in about 15 states (but not Washington). These licenses live on a person’s smartphone and cryptographic material tied to the license is only given up by a person’s biometrics, such as thumbprint or facial ID.
“For example, we could be online, and I could say, ‘Show me your ID.’ The phone will ask for your biometric, and then it’ll provide that ID,” Horadan said. “So now I have absolutely foolproof proof that this person is, in fact, who they say they are, and that they’re here live right now.”
The second big identity verification need coming is because of AI agents. The personal digital assistants can make a reservation, do your banking, log into your work systems, and more.
“The problem is, you have to give it your username and password, which is a giant security risk,” Horadan said. “And so for the new agentic future, we’ve released our ‘Know Your Agent’ platform, and it allows people to know what are good agents and what are bad agents, and which agents can [they] trust with that information.”
Earlier this year, Vouched launched KnowThat.ai, an agent reputation directory, as part of the Know Your Agent (KYA) suite. Powered by AI to safeguard against AI, it’s all designed to provide continuous monitoring of agent behavior and proactively detect anomalous or potentially malicious activity.
“We’re seeing very strong growth and very strong demand for what we’re doing,” Horadan said, adding that the company is above $10 million in annual recurring revenue.
Customers are across industries including healthcare and telemedicine, fintech, and auto.
Founded in 2018, Vouched was spun out of Madrona Venture Labs, the onetime accelerator that was absorbed back into the Madrona venture firm in Seattle.
The startup raised $6.3 million in February 2023 and has raised $22 million to date. Vouched employs 40 people.
Horadan joined Vouched as CEO last year. He’s a seasoned tech executive who spent two years at The Sage Group, which acquired Lockstep, an accounting software startup he co-founded in 2022. He was previously executive vice president of engineering and CTO at tax software giant Avalara, and also led teams at Microsoft and Concur.
“What other people think of as boring, back-end business processes, they actually have tremendous value, because every business has to do them. And when you automate it, there’s a real ROI that’s created,” Horadan said. “It’s interesting that Seattle is such a hub for these kind of plays.”
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