Sometimes it can be difficult to identify the voices of family and friends while on the phone, something that becomes even more important when you’re trying to ID a voice for sensitive financial information.
Illuma Labs, a Plano-based secure voice authentication platform, is looking to solve that problem for credit union call centers. And to help it do so, the company reported landing a $2.5 million investment from the Curql Collective’s flagship fund.
“The infusion of investment from Curql is very timely for expanding this solution to the entire credit union community,” said Milind Borkar, Illuma Labs founder and CEO, in a statement.
Incorporating AI and machine learning, the startup’s fraud-prevention technology Illuma Shield creates what it calls an “AudioPrint,” like an audio fingerprint of a caller’s voice, created during the natural course of a conversation. The information is then stored for future verifications, doing away with more traditional authentication methods like PINs and personal questions. That allows credit union call centers to verify the identity of multiple callers at the same time.
The company said it plans to use the recent funds to develop new anti-fraud features and bring on additional platform integrations.
“This enables the technology to scale across a range of applications, from caller authentication in large contact centers handling thousands of simultaneous calls to user identification in resource-constrained connected devices like smartphones and smart speakers,” Illuma’s website states.
Illuma was founded in 2016 with tech developed with R&D contracts totaling $2 million from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The startup credits recent traction it has received to being named best-in-show at the 2019 VentureTech Fintech Conference, a curated pitch competition by credit unions and investors. That brought it together with investors The Veridia Group and the Texas Dow Employees Credit Union (TDECU), and CUNA Strategic Serves in June of last year. The amount of the investment was not disclosed.
Combined, Veridia and TDECU have more than 500,000 members. It also partnered with Wisconsin-based Connexus Credit Union, which has more than 380,000 members, in March.
Iowa-based Curql was formed in 2020 by the Members Development Company, a network of credit union industry leaders, and Next Level Ventures. It launched its flagship Curql Fund I, which Next Level manages, in February. Looking to hit $150 million for the fund, in April, Curql announced hitting its first fundraising goal of $70 million.
“Our investments focus on collaboration between fintech companies and credit unions to improve how members experience their credit unions,” said Nick Evens, Curql president and CEO, in a statement.
