January 6 (SeeNews) - Romanian-born behavioral-biometrics company TypingDNA said that it raised a $7 million (6.3 million euro) in a Series A round led by Gradient Ventures, Google’s AI-focused venture fund.
TypingDNA will use the funds to improve typing biometrics adoption worldwide, it said in a press release on Saturday.
The company also aims to expand its developer support network and offer more tools to integrate their Application Programming Interface
(API) with existing website development platforms.
"Advancing the research and distribution of typing biometrics is of global importance. Keyboards are incorporated in almost any device today, making typing behavior the most widely available user biometric. This round of funding will allow us to further our mission to provide user-friendly, non-intrusive biometrics and increased security to people around the world," TypingDNA CEO and co-founder Raul Popa said.
Other participants in the investment round include EU-based fund GapMinder, Techstars Ventures and other prior investors.
"We’re excited about TypingDNA’s developer-first approach to enable people to authenticate securely based on how they type. With global regulation impacting face-recognition-based authentication and hackers targeting SMS-based two-factor authentication, typing biometrics is the best form of identifying people without compromising privacy or security," Gradient Ventures general partner Darian Shirazi said.
TypingDNA was founded in 2016 in Romania by local entrepreneurs Raul Popa and Cristian Tamas. The company moved its headquarters to New York in 2018 and now offers a variety of solutions which help companies recognize people by the way they type.
TypingDNA previously raised a $1.5 million seed round from investors, including founders of unicorn companies such as UiPath and DataDog.
Gradient Ventures is Google’s AI-focused venture fund, which invests in and connects early-stage startups with Google’s resources, innovation, and technical leadership in artificial intelligence. Gradient was founded in 2017 and is based in Palo Alto, California.
($=0.8982 euro)