SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SentiLink, the leader in identity verification technology, announced today a $70 million Series B funding round led by David Sacks of Craft Ventures with participation from Felicis Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and NYCA. This brings SentiLink’s total funding raised to $85 million. David Sacks and Victoria Treyger from Felicis will be joining SentiLink’s board as observers.
Identity fraud costs financial institutions billions of dollars a year in losses. With the goal of solving identity verification in the U.S., SentiLink will use the financing to build out its product suite and further grow its team. SentiLink works with over 100 financial institutions, and has verified several hundred million applications to date.
“SentiLink’s growth trajectory is one of the fastest I've ever seen and their traction with companies from new startups to major US banks is impressive,” said David Sacks, Co-founder and General Partner at Craft Ventures. “All of this stems from the team’s deep understanding of fraud and identity. I learned about fraud attacks I didn't even think were possible from talking with Naftali and Max. We're excited to lead SentiLink's Series B and to support them as they transform how identity verification works in the US.”
Co-founded by Naftali Harris and Max Blumenfeld, SentiLink provides a new kind of identity verification to help financial institutions with synthetic fraud, ID theft, and other emerging fraud vectors. Its real-time fraud solutions detect fake and stolen identities for new account applications. SentiLink not only created a solution that tackled a hard-to-define problem, but partners with clients as trusted fraud advisors to share new fraud trends and review specific cases on an ongoing basis.
SentiLink takes a different approach than other companies in the space. Instead of spewing buzzwords like "Artificial Intelligence,” SentiLink focuses on deeply understanding fraud and identity, and then using technology to productionalize these insights. These discoveries include the deterioration of phone/name match data, a new approach to detecting “J1 fraud”, and uncovering “same name” fraud. This deep understanding is so important that SentiLink employs a team of Risk Analysts whose full time job is to investigate new kinds of fraud and discover what the fraudsters are doing.
“SentiLink is reinventing identity verification in the US. Despite businesses spending large amounts of time and money trying to figure out if people are who they say they are, identity fraud is rampant and real customers suffer from false positives and unnecessary friction,” said Naftali Harris, Co-Founder and CEO of SentiLink. “Our new approach is grounded in our deep understanding of fraud and identity and is changing how identity verification works in the US.”
About SentiLink
SentiLink is a leader in identity verification technology. This includes solutions to prevent synthetic fraud, identity theft, and other emerging fraud vectors at the point of account origination. SentiLink was founded by Naftali Harris and Maxwell Blumenfeld in 2017, two former risk leaders from the online lender Affirm. SentiLink has raised $85M to date from investors and partners with over 100 financial institutions. For more information, please visit: https://www.sentilink.com/
