Authenteq has successfully raised $5 million in funding, and the company is looking to take in more investors in the second closing of the Series A financing. The second phase of the funding is scheduled to take place in the next two weeks. Authenteq made its service public in 2018, and within the first month of its launch, it had been successful in reeling in a dozen clients.
Kari Thor Runarsson, the Authenteq CEO, said that Tim Draper’s continuous support and Capital300’s entrepreneurial spirit boosted Authenteq’s confidence in its growth. Tim Draper has previously invested in companies like Skype, Tesla, SpaceX, Baidu, Coinbase, Robinhood, and Twitch. Draper praised Authenteq in a statement saying, “I believe that Authenteq is the beginning of the solution to true and pure identity, which may eliminate many of the security concerns in the market today. Their product is simple and elegant.” On the other hand, Runarsson explained the reason behind their decision to do two closings.
The reason we decided to do two closings, is we were introduced to an investor (Capital300) with a startup mindset of getting things done and felt it was a great challenge to try to finish all due diligence and paperwork in two weeks after the term sheet was approved. It was sort of a field test for us to see if they really were as agile and dynamic as they claimed to be during our discussions. We were honestly surprised how smoothly it went, despite a very thorough due diligence and legal process. – Kari Thor Runarsson, CEO at Authenteq
Authenteq’s automatic identity verification process is run by Artificial Intelligence. It uses a proprietary passive liveness detection to make sure that whoever is signing up for the service is signing up in real-time. An eID is issued for the user, and in less than a minute, a user is verified with government-grade facial recognition algorithms, and the photo ID documents are authenticated. Authenteq unique because it gives its users complete control and ownership over their online identity.
What’s even more alluring about it is that its identity management service can stop trolls online. When a user is banned with Trollteq, they cannot under any circumstances register under a false name or identity. To register for Authenteq, the user first needs to capture a selfie and take a photo of some forms of identification.
Authenteq’s verifies the image and the photo ID against one another, once verified it associates the user with a login account that the user is creating. Reykjavik, Iceland-based Authenteq will then verify that the user is indeed human. Authenteq stores a hash string on the blockchain to re-verify the user’s identity if the need be. Authenteq is all for customer privacy because they do not store any data.
