Voice security and authentication startup Pindrop has closed a $90 million Series D round led by London-based Vitruvian Partners.
Additional investors include Allegion Ventures, Cross Creek, Dimension Data, Singapore-based EDBI and Goldman Sachs, along with existing investors CapitalG, IVP, Andreessen Horowitz, GV (formerly Google Ventures) and Citi Ventures.
Vijay Balasubramaniyan, co-founder, CEO and CTO of Pindrop, said the group of investors is a large indicator of how the startup will be growing: international expansion, growth in the Atlanta tech sector and branching into IoT.
"One of the focus areas is whatever we’ve done, we have a lot of business momentum and that momentum has propelled us to grow into these new regions, but a lot of where we’re growing in these new regions is largely sales and marketing," he said. "The technical side of the house is still in Atlanta, so we’re going to grow the technical teams and the support teams specifically here."
Balasubramaniyan expects a 30-40 percent job growth among his 200 employees in Atlanta, as the business grows from traditional voice security markets into the IoT market.
In the future, Pindrop hopes to enable its security to voice-operated technology such as Alexa, Google Home, cars and even TV remotes.
"Doors in the future are going to be voice activated," Balasubramaniyan said. "You can walk up to the door, say, 'Open the front door,' and it does it all with your voice."
Pindrop's patented technology extracts intelligence from calls and voice monitoring to help detect fraudsters and authenticate genuine customers.
“Voice-enabled interfaces are expanding how consumers interact with IoT devices in their everyday lives – as well as IoT manufacturers’ ability to offer smarter and stronger solutions,” Allegion Ventures President Rob Martens said in a statement. “We’re excited about the future of voice technology and see Pindrop as a pioneer in the space."
The company is less than a mile off from where Balasubramaniyan envisioned it when he started the business in 2011. It has seen exceptional growth with 137 percent compounded annual growth rate in revenue during the last three years, according to a news release. The startup has more than 200 million customer accounts, including eight out of the 10 largest banks and five of the seven largest insurance companies in the country.
"If anyone is looking for a job in the hottest startup in Atlanta, we’d like them to apply at Pindrop," he said.
