Announcing Persona’s $200M Series D

While identity verification was once mostly limited to regulated industries like fintech, it’s now critical for businesses of all kinds, from helping social platforms, travel companies, and digital communities build trust to securing developers’ access to the latest LLM models and verifying employees to combat account takeovers. This is evident in the fact that today, Persona supports customers across a wide range of countries, use cases, and industries, from football teams to airlines, colleges, banks, cities, and global platforms like LinkedIn, Block, and OpenAI.

As this growing complexity has driven businesses to rethink how they approach identity, they’re increasingly turning to Persona for help. Identity has become more central to how organizations operate, and we’ve grown quickly to meet that demand, processing more than 300 million verifications in 2024 and doubling revenue and customer count year over year.

This is why I’m excited to share that we’ve raised a $200 million Series D led by Founders Fund and Ribbit Capital, with participation from existing investors including BOND, Chemistry, Coatue Management, First Round, and Index Ventures.

This round is about more than just funding; it’s a reflection of how rapidly identity is evolving and how urgently the world needs a better way to manage it. As AI reshapes how we work, transact, and communicate, identity has gone from a point-in-time security check to a foundational layer that helps organizations understand who's behind every online interaction, regardless of whether it’s an agent or a human.

Identity is more complex than ever

Over the years, identity verification has undergone a series of transformations. In the early days of the internet, access was mostly controlled by something you knew — think security questions like “what street did you grow up on?” and Social Security numbers (despite not being designed as unique identifiers). Then came something you had, like two-factor authentication codes.

By the time we created Persona in 2018, the industry had shifted toward something you are — government ID and selfie verification had become the norm. But as technology advanced, so did the ways bad actors could game it. Deepfakes, digitally altered images, and synthetic identities pushed the industry to adopt more secure methods, such as NFC-based ID verification and digital IDs.

To us, this shift reflects something bigger: identity has become essential infrastructure everywhere. But as reliance on identity grows, so does the challenge of keeping up.

Take the regulatory space as just one example. As digital interactions continue multiplying and evolving, every organization, platform, and government is adopting its own identity standards, systems, and verification protocols. The result: a fractured and fast-changing identity landscape shaped by both rising data protectionism and regional regulation.

From GDPR in the EU to KYC mandates in Asia and state-level privacy laws in the US, organizations now face a patchwork of requirements, each with different definitions, thresholds, and enforcement practices.

And it’s not just regulations complicating the landscape. Fraud is becoming more sophisticated, too. Because of AI, it’s easier than ever to generate fake identities, manipulate documents, and automate attacks at scale, rendering traditional defenses like advanced image analysis and passive signals increasingly ineffective.

Despite this growing complexity, most organizations are still trying to solve identity in isolation, creating business overhead, user friction, and an unsustainable cycle of rebuilding. Every new compliance shift, risk model, and user journey forces businesses to retool their systems yet again, straining both product and compliance teams.

The age of agentic AI demands a new approach to identity

AI didn't just complicate the future of digital identity; it intensified long-standing challenges, pushing the internet toward a pivotal reckoning around what it means to be human online. In 2024, bot traffic officially surpassed human activity online, and with bots and AI agents projected to drive ~90% of all traffic by the end of the decade, the shift toward automation is undeniable.

But it’s not just the surge in traffic that’s making identity more complex; it’s the sophistication of what AI can do. Today, AI can generate lifelike content, solve virtually any CAPTCHA test, and increasingly act on behalf of real people in ways that blur the line between human and machine.

As we move into an era of agentic AI, identity challenges won't just grow — they’ll multiply. AI is fundamentally changing how we interact online, creating new identity moments, new expectations around privacy, and new questions around accountability and intent. The real hurdle is no longer spotting bots; it’s verifying who’s behind every action and whether they can be trusted.

But as verified identity becomes more important than ever, we can’t afford to lose sight of something just as critical: privacy. We can’t build a future where people are asked to manually submit personal information over and over again just to interact with a service or authorize AI to act on their behalf. And we absolutely can’t build a future where this complexity increases the risk of data leaks, misuse, or loss of user control.

That’s the crossroads we’re standing at. Individuals are growing increasingly privacy-conscious, but the systems around them are trending in the opposite direction. We’re on the verge of a world where people have little to no control over their own data — and everyone feels it. If we want to prioritize privacy in an AI-powered world, we need a model that makes identity easier and more secure. One that puts users back in control.

Whether someone is opening a bank account or buying a bottle of wine, proving who they are shouldn’t mean giving up control. It should be as simple as a tap — and just as secure.

Building to stay ahead of today’s and tomorrow’s challenges

At Persona, we don’t shy away from identity’s complexity — we design for it. That’s why we’re focused on not just building a product, but building a platform. A platform that guides organizations through best practices we’ve uncovered but also gives them flexible building blocks to tailor identity to their unique use cases and business needs. And a platform for consumers that enables identity to work more like payments: fast, secure, and most importantly, portable.

That means:

• Organizations ranging from businesses to institutions, nonprofits, and governments can spend less time chasing compliance and more time building great experiences. They can trust that users are who they say they are without needing to collect unnecessary personal data or constantly retool their systems every time standards shift.

• Consumers own and control how their PII is saved, stored, shared, and used across devices and services. Instead of resubmitting the same information every time, they can reuse verified data, making identity simple, secure, and privacy-first — just like tapping a credit card.

By simplifying how identity is verified, managed, and reused, we make it easier for businesses to stay compliant and for individuals to stay in control. Persona does the hard work behind the scenes — integrating the world’s many identity standards, tools, and regulations into a single, privacy-first platform built to scale with the future of identity. That includes every kind of digital ID worldwide and all the exciting innovations still to come. Our commitment to businesses isn’t just about giving them best-in-class technology today; it’s about helping them stay ahead of what’s next. As the identity landscape continues to evolve, so does Persona. This ensures our partners are always ready for the next shift without needing to overhaul their systems or workflows.

But building strong infrastructure is just the beginning. Solving today’s and tomorrow’s identity challenges also depends on collaboration — not just between businesses and users, but across the ecosystem.

As businesses verify more interactions through our platform, we want to provide the rails to enable cooperation with each other and collectively fight fraud while preserving user privacy and control. And that collaboration goes beyond data sharing, so we’re also creating space for customers and identity experts to exchange insights and best practices in order to build a stronger, more proactive defense together.

All of this lays the groundwork for what comes next: a more human, seamless internet where identity works for every individual, business, and use case.

Our vision: the verified identity layer for the internet

As we step into this next chapter, our mission remains clear: humanize online identity. And our vision remains the same: build the verified identity layer for the internet, making it easier for organizations to verify identities and safer for individuals to prove who they are online. As AI accelerates both opportunity and complexity, identity has never been more critical — or more nuanced.

The future of identity isn’t about adding friction or slowing things down. It’s about making security effortless and enabling individuals to move through the digital world seamlessly while giving businesses the confidence they need to keep up with evolving risks and regulations.

Whether it’s verifying the human behind an AI agent, stopping a deepfake job interview, or enabling a user to access the right service with a tap, we’re here to help organizations adapt without adding complexity for the people they serve.

This funding isn't just an investment in Persona, but in a future where identity works for everyone — making security stronger, experiences simpler, and privacy the standard. We’re honored to be on this journey with our customers, partners, and team.