Dhiraj Bhat

After 4.5 yrs of watching the idv + fraud category from the vc seat + working on identity + fraud partnerships at Affirm for a few yrs before that, I'm convinced these cos are destined to be acquired, mostly at sub venture scale outcomes if you look at the exit history, the buyer is almost always one of three: a credit bureau, a card network, or a bigger IDV platform rolling up point solutions I feel like the structural problem is that fraud signals compound with data so whoever sees the most txns wins, and that's always going to be the bureaus and networks. a standalone vendor with one clever signal is kind of a feature waiting for its acquirer I think it's really just one company in the space that has pulled off a real IPO. Riskified went public at $3.3B in 2021 but trades around $700M today, on a business doing over $350M in revenue. it trades below its last private round (CLEAR as IPOd ID co doesn't count imo not a pure IDV vendor) And then you have Alloy + Socure + Trulioo but my hunch is that those cos will have a hard time exiting at where they got priced at the top of market in 2021 ($1.55B, $4.5B, $1.75B). The exception to all of this may be Sardine from what I've heard, raised a $70M C in Feb '25 + assuming it priced somewhere around $600M + have heard anecdotally it is growing well since then I think you can build good businesses here and make money! but I'm increasingly convinced you're just not gonna hit venture scale @Experian: - NeuroID: behavioral analytics, undisclosed but I think ~$150M-$200M (2024) - KYC360: AML screening, undisclosed (2025) - AtData: email intelligence, undisclosed (2026) @TransUnion: - iovation: device reputation, undisclosed (2018) - Neustar: identity resolution, $3.1B (2021) --> but they were mostly marketing, comms, + security data biz @Equifax: - Midigator: chargeback mitigation, undisclosed (2022) - Kount: fraud + digital id platform, $640M (2021) @LexisNexis: - ThreatMetrix: device intelligence, $830M (2018) - Emailage: email risk, ~$480M reported (2020) - BehavioSec: behavioral biometrics, undisclosed (2022) - IDVerse: document verification, undisclosed (2025) @Visa: - CardinalCommerce: 3DS authentication, undisclosed (2017) - Verifi: dispute resolution, undisclosed (2019) - Featurespace: transaction monitoring, ~$925M reported (2024) - BioCatch: behavioral biometrics, $2.4B (2026) @Mastercard: - NuData: behavioral biometrics, undisclosed (2017) - Brighterion: AI fraud scoring, undisclosed (2017) - Ethoca: chargeback resolution, undisclosed (2019) - RiskRecon: cyber risk ratings, undisclosed (2019) - Ekata: identity data, $850M (2021) @Moodys: - Bureau van Dijk: company data, $3B (2017) --> more entity data than IDV, but it's the foundation of their KYC stack - RDC: AML screening + adverse media, $700M (2020) - Bogard: PEP screening, undisclosed (2021) - PassFort: KYC onboarding workflow, undisclosed (2021) --> had just raised a $16.2M Series A two months before selling - kompany: business verification / KYB, undisclosed (closed 2022) Others: @PayPal bought Fraud Sciences: transaction risk, $169M (2008) and Simility: fraud orchestration, $120M (2018) @AmericanExpress bought Accertify: chargeback management, $150M (2010) and InAuth: device intelligence, undisclosed (2016) GBG bought IDology: identity verification, $300M (2019) and bought Acuant: document verification, $736M (2021) Mitek bought ID R&D: voice + face biometrics, ~$49M (2021) and HooYu: KYC journey orchestration, ~$129M (2022) @stripe bought Bouncer: card scanning + verification, undisclosed (2021) @Plaid bought Cognito: identity verification, ~$250M reported (2022) @SocureID bought Berbix: document verification, ~$70M (2023) and Effectiv: fraud orchestration, ~$136M (2024) @Entrust_Corp bought Onfido: document verification, ~$650M reported (2024) @Worldpay_Global bought Ravelin: ecommerce fraud detection, undisclosed (2025) @IncodeIdentity bought AuthenticID: identity verification, undisclosed (2025) and Identiq: privacy-preserving identity network, ~$100M reported (2026)