Coatue Management
Investors in this week's deals reflect rapid growth in the digital identity market, causing companies to reach high valuations and raise new rounds to expand their organizations. Most notably, Acuant acquired Hello Soda for an undisclosed amount in an effort to increase their product stack. This illustrates a trend wherein companies are looking for inorganic methods of expanding the services required to keep up with the identity market's rapid growth. Persona raised $50 million of Series B venture funding to grow their team to keep pace with the rapid 10x YoY revenue increase. Lastly, Sysdig raised $188 million of Series F venture funding to help with the company's team growth. The new raise puts Sysdig's pre-money valuation at unicorn status.
Just as we predicted, ForgeRock announced May 4th that it is looking to IPO in the third quarter of the year, and it is currently talking to the investment bank Morgan Stanley. ForgeRock is a digital identity management platform designed to facilitate secure organizational access controls. Its announcement to go public highlights the rapid growth that the digital identity market is encountering. Learn more about this and other, similar predictions here.
Hello Soda is a provider of a big data analytics and text analytics platform intended to detect and reduce the risk of fraud. The company designs and develops ID verification software, fraud detection software and security risk services for businesses to provide real-time detailed insights into their consumers, enabling them to make informed business decisions in identity and fraud, risk and personalization throughout the United Kingdom and worldwide.
The company was acquired by Acuant, via its financial sponsor Audax Group, through an LBO on May 4, 2021, for an undisclosed sum. Acuant wants to continue its investment and commitment to providing innovative technology, and the new acquisition will expand its solutions in the market.
Persona is a developer of identity verification systems designed to protect and secure identity from theft and fraud. The company's system offers a comprehensive suite of fully-automated identity verification components with worldwide coverage which can be configured, themed, and branded to create custom-tailored flows that cover any use case, enabling businesses to seamlessly verify customer identities with a drop-in widget that can be integrated within less than 10 lines of code.
The company raised $50 million of Series B venture funding in a deal led by Index Ventures on May 3, 2021. Coatue Management also participated in the round. Persona plans to use its new capital to grow its team another twofold by year’s end to support its growth and continue scaling the business.
Unum ID has secured funding from Franklin Templeton for an undisclosed amount to support its vision of a ‘sharified’ (shared, verified), digital identity which utilizes mobile device biometrics and brings together email credentials, passwords and other verifications all in one place. Additionally, the company raised $2 million of seed funding in a deal led by Draper Associates on June 17, 2020, putting the company's pre-money valuation at $10 million. Tappan Hill Ventures, Wedbush Ventures, Hard Yaka, EvoNexus and other undisclosed investors also participated in the round. The funds will be used to accelerate sales and product development efforts.
Sysdig is a developer of a DevOps platform designed to offer security to confidently run containers, Kubernetes, and cloud services. The company's platform secures the build pipeline, detects and responds to runtime threats, continuously validates compliance, and monitors and troubleshoots cloud infrastructure and services, thereby helping cloud and security teams to secure and operate cloud-native applications in production.
The company raised $188 million of Series F venture funding in a deal led by Third Point Ventures and Premji Invest on April 28, 2021, putting the company's pre-money valuation at $1.00 billion. Next47, Insight Partners, Bain Capital Ventures, Accel, DFJ Growth, and The Goldman Sachs Group also participated in the round. The funds will be used to grow the company's R&D teams, as well as sales and marketing. The company raised $80 million of Series E venture funding in a deal led by Insight Partners on January 22, 2020, putting the company's pre-money valuation at $400 million. Bain Capital Ventures, Accel, Glynn Capital, IQT, and The Goldman Sachs Group also participated in the round.
Founded in 1999, Coatue Management is a sector-oriented hedge fund manager based in New York, New York. The firm primarily invests in companies operating in the information technology sectors.
Active Portfolio - 137
Investments (TTM) - 104
Med. Round Amount - $100M
Med. Valuation - $1.09B
# of Exits - 28
ForgeRock is a developer of a digital identity management platform designed to facilitate secure organizational access controls. The company's platform offers identity and access management, identity gateway, directory services, profile, and privacy safety controls, which help to securely connect people devices, thereby providing organizations with digital open identity stack services in a secure manner.
The San Francisco-based company is working with Morgan Stanley on an IPO, which could come as early as the third quarter, and it could seek a valuation of $3 billion to $4 billion when going public.
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