ID.me, a McLean company that helps customers manage and verify their online identities, confirmed a gargantuan $100 million in new funding in an announcement Monday.
The new infusion, first reported exclusively by the Washington Business Journal on Thursday, includes Viking Global Investors, Counterpoint Global (Morgan Stanley), PSP Growth, Lead Edge Capital, WndrCo, Willoughby Capital, BoxGroup and Moonshots Capital, according to the announcement. CapitalG, the independent growth fund of Google parent company Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), also participated.
The fresh funding brings the company's valuation to $1.5 billion. ID.me, founded in 2010 as the military-focused TroopSwap, last raised $8.33 million in June, at a $483.33 million valuation, according to venture data firm PitchBook. Until this latest round, ID.me had raised a total $41.33 million, per PitchBook.
The company said in the announcement that the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated a shift online for critical services, which requires more identity management and verification to help deter fraud. ID.me makes login and identity credentials portable across platforms — which means users only need one set of login credentials no matter the site they visit.
"What Visa did for financial transactions, we are doing for identity with our secure digital identity network," CEO and founder Blake Hall said in the announcement. "It's hard to imagine a world without Visa, where people wouldn't have a portable credential for payments, yet logins and passwords are often useful only at one organization."
This new funding comes after the company said in late 2020 that it planned to hire more than 1,000 employees by the end of 2021. At the time, ID.me said it had hired 300 employees in 2020, bringing its total headcount to 350 as of November, and opened up two new locations in Tysons. Its headquarters sits at 8289 Greensboro Drive in McLean.
In its announcement, ID.me said it plans to use the new funds to continue with its hiring and expand its customer base to more businesses and government agencies. So far, its federal contracts include those with the Department of Veterans Affairs, IRS and one with the Department of Treasury whose total value Hall described as nearly $400 million across five years, according to a Forbes report. The company's work has generated annual recurring revenue of more than $65 million, per that report.
In all, ID.me has 39 million members and said it is signing up another 70,000 new users daily. It said more than 22 states have signed up to accept ID.me's login since August, many to verify applicants for unemployment claims. That includes the likes of New York, Kentucky, South Carolina and North Carolina.
