ForgeRock raises $93.5 million to fuel cloud digital identity innovations and biometrics delivery

ForgeRock has announced that it has raised $93.5 million in funding and passed a $100 million annual run rate. The company plans to invest in research and development, cloud, global sales and market awareness to accelerate growth, and invest in the ForgeRock Identity Cloud, as it seeks to enable its enterprise customers to deliver the best possible digital identity experiences.

That includes biometrics, as ForgeRock CEO Fran Rosch tells Biometric Update in an email.

“This funding will allow ForgeRock to continue to provide third-party capabilities such as centralized biometric systems to satisfy the need for roaming or inter-device movement, easy-to-implement and creative FIDO solutions, and innovative biometrics modalities that go beyond what is available with FIDO or native to the device,” Rosch explains.

The Series E round was led by Riverwood Capital, with existing investors Accel, Meritech Capital, Foundation Capital and KKR Growth participating.

Jeff Parks, co-founder and managing partner of Riverwood Capital, will join ForgeRock’s Board of Directors, and Rosch says he brings “a strong track record of partnering with high-growth technology companies and supporting their scale as they push toward an IPO.” Rosch notes that Parks was focussed on large-scale leveraged buyout investments of tech companies as a KKR executive before establishing Riverwood.

“ForgeRock’s comprehensive platform is very well-positioned to capitalize on the enormous opportunity in the Identity and Access Management market,” Parks comments in the press release. “ForgeRock is the leader in solving a wide range of workforce and consumer identity use cases for the Global 2000 and is trusted by some of the largest companies to manage millions of user identities. We have seen the growth acceleration and are thrilled to partner with this leadership team.”

The company says in the announcement that it has revenue above $100 million, annual recurring revenue growth of 75 percent, and more than 1,100 organizations on the ForgeRock Identity Platform. It has grown from fewer than 50 people in 2010 to more than 600 today, and released new capabilities and numerous partnerships with companies providing biometrics in 2019, such as Yoti.

“ForgeRock is the only AI-driven platform that empowers organizations to create amazing digital experiences for both workforce and consumer segments as well as things,” Rosch says in the announcement. “Increasingly, our platform is becoming mission critical to the largest organizations in the world, and we take our responsibility seriously to deliver on their expectations. This has become even more pronounced as remote work and E-commerce has surged in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Completing this funding round in the current climate is a testament to the relevance of ForgeRock.”

He suggests to Biometric Update that the biggest problem facing enterprises in the current market of remote access to everyone is making the same shift to digital.

“This means charting a smooth and satisfying digital experience for the workforce, employees and connected things by streamlining logins, killing the hated password, and giving people exactly what they want on any device, while ensuring that their security and privacy is upheld,” he writes.

The increase in demand is not changing the company’s growth strategy, however, but merely speeding it up.

“ForgeRock is fortunate to offer exactly what organizations need to respond to massive increases in remote workers and on-line consumer activity,” Rosch writes in the email. “This pandemic is accelerating digital transformation timelines at many organizations and we’re seeing increased demand for what we offer as a result.”

The company recently appointed SAML and XML innovator and digital identity veteran Eve Maler as CTO. The company has also picked up the SC Magazine Trust Award for Best Authentication and took the high score in the 2020 Gartner Peer Insights “Voice of the Customer” research for Identity Governance and Administration (IGA).

Article Topics

access management  |  biometrics  |  cloud services  |  digital identity  |  ForgeRock  |  funding  |  identity management  |  investment