Digital identity company Yoti has raised £8m of new equity investment from existing private investors, employees and Robin Tombs, Yoti’s Co-Founder and Chief Executive.
Yoti is a free app for consumers that lets people prove their identity to businesses and people, and prove their age online and to purchase age-restricted goods.
The company, currently headquartered in London, works with a variety of businesses in the retail, travel and media sector – partnerships include Heathrow Airport to explore biometric travel for passengers and Yubo to verify the age of its users and safeguard young people online.
Yoti has developed an AI age estimation technology called Yoti Age Scan, and has built licensable IP products around anti-spoofing and signed the Safe Face Pledge to demonstrate its commitment towards a fair and transparent approach towards biometrics and AI.
Yoti’s age estimation technology is being used by social networking app Yubo to estimate the age of individuals, and flag any accounts where the person appears to have significantly misstated their age – an important step to help safeguard young people online. Yubo has already run over 22 million checks using Yoti Age Scan.
Robin Tombs, Co-Founder and CEO of Yoti said: “We believe there’s tremendous potential in the use of digital identity for everyone.
“Over the past few years we have invested about £65m to develop our privacy-preserving identity system, giving individuals a safe and secure way to prove their age or identity, for free. This latest funding round will help us to continue to grow our consumer network and work with businesses globally to give as many people as possible a simpler and safer way of proving who they are.”
The latest funding round gives the company a post money equity valuation of £82m, following two previous investment rounds.