Astartup founded to commercialize online fraud-fighting technology developed at the University of Arizona raised $35 million in its second round of venture-capital funding.
The investment in Tucson-based Neuro-ID was led by Canapi Ventures, a Washington, D.C., investment firm specializing in financial-tech companies, with previous investors Fin VC and TTV Capital also participating.
Neuro-ID was founded in 2014 based on research by co-founders Joseph Valacich, professor of management information systems at the UA Eller College of Management, and his former Ph.D. student, Jeff Jenkins, now an associate professor of information systems at Brigham Young University.
Neuro-ID’s analytics technology tracks and interprets customers’ “digital body language” — online behavior such as how they type or click through a form — to boost legitimate transactions while spotting and isolating costly fraud in real time.
The company’s customers include Intuit, Square, Affirm, OppFi and Elephant Insurance.
The latest funding builds on a $7 million funding round in December and follows an active year which saw the company grow clients and revenue fourfold, Neuro-ID said.
Valacich said that after years of research it is gratifying to see the company’s technology being adopted by industry leaders and backed by major players.
“This was the dream. It is so exciting to see the company achieve such success with so much more to come,” said Valacich, citing the support of the UA’s tech-commercialization arm, Tech Launch Arizona.
“Seeing this kind of success stemming from research at the University of Arizona demonstrates how important translating technology from the lab to the world is to creating impact,” said Doug Hockstad, assistant vice president of Tech Launch Arizona.
Source: Tucson startup based on UA anti-fraud tech wins $35M in VC funding | Business News | tucson.com
