SAN FRANCISCO — Darwinium, a digital security and fraud prevention platform, has raised $18 million in Series A financing led by U.S. Venture Partners (USVP), with participation from seed investors: Blackbird, Airtree Ventures and Accomplice. The new funding brings total investment to $26 million and enables Darwinium to scale its edge-based solution across global geographies, where it is quickly gaining traction across multiple vertical industries including fintech, eCommerce, financial services and gaming/gambling.
Online fraud has become more complex and harder to detect, facilitated by AI-tooling that is being exploited by adversaries. Businesses have responded with multiple point solutions deployed across the customer journey which have created friction for good users, and information siloes that continue to favor the fraudster.
The 2022 Gartner Market Guide for Online Fraud Detection* states “Detecting fraud in digital channels is a challenge, due to the competing requirements of dealing with emerging attack vectors and delivering a smooth user experience.” They recommend that “Security and risk management leaders must orchestrate multiple capabilities to create dynamic user journeys while minimizing risk.”
Darwinium addresses these challenges by delivering two key innovations: first, it moves fraud detection processes to the customer’s network perimeter (or ‘to the edge’) to provide businesses a holistic view of their customers’ online experience or “journey” across every digital touchpoint, and better separate trusted and risky behavior. Second, it has pioneered a SaaS-based approach to data protection that weaves strong, strategic data security into its unique, edge-based approach.
“The Darwinium team has built something truly unique,” says Rick Lewis, General Partner at USVP. “Darwinium offers a product that is both simple to deploy and effective at reducing fraud losses and reputational damage associated with the ever-more complex web of digital fraud. Darwinium is a game-changer, differentiated in a crowded market, offering the innovation that businesses are asking for to simplify their risk stack.”
“AI capabilities have given fraudsters the upper hand of speed, scale and greater efficiency. This is why we designed Darwinium to deliver the visibility and coverage of a security tool, the context and insight of fraud solutions, with the agility of AI. It’s the platform that will future-proof organizations against the most complex attacks,” said Alisdair Faulkner, co-founder and CEO of Darwinium and former co-founder and CPO ThreatMetrix (acquired by LexisNexis Risk Solutions in 2018 for $830 million). “With this round, we can more effectively execute on our vision to protect every customer from the consequences of fraud, scams and abuse.”
