-1.jpg)
I’m pleased to announce that in December 2021 we closed a growth investment round of $100 million led by WestCap with additional investments from NightDragon. This round of funding will support the continued growth of HUMAN into new regions of the world and continued expansion of the product portfolio into new use cases in security and anti-fraud. HUMAN is committed to protecting digital experiences from fraud and abuse. This recent growth investment will allow us to continue to keep the internet human.
We started this company ten years ago this month. Dan, Michael, Ash and I set out to build a company of consequence to solve an important problem on the internet, then working in a science fiction bookstore in Brooklyn, NY. What we learned over the past decade, at many times, resembled science fiction – bots became more human-like every month, watching movies, adding items to shopping carts, favoriting songs, expressing strong political opinions. Bots become more sophisticated daily and in our work we see bots being used for a wide variety of attacks: from breaking into accounts, to fraud in online advertising and media, to manipulating popularity & opinion. What would you do if you could appear to be a million people at once?
The bot problem is one of the most important cybersecurity problems of modern times and verifying humanity is fundamental to the security and integrity of the internet as we know it. Botnets have become one of the most prolific modern attack tools, used in over three quarters of security and fraud incidents. Our mantra is simple - stop the bots, stop the threats.
Telling the difference between a human and a sophisticated bot can be a difficult task. It takes more than a Captcha - which is often defeated by Captcha solving bots and ultimately serves only to place the burden on real humans, rather than attackers. The foundation of our Human Verification Engine is built differently, with over 300 advanced algorithms that can passively detect the technical structure of automated agents, with no additional friction to humans. Our R&D program is layered with a robust threat intelligence capability and internet scale visibility, verifying the humanity of 15 trillion interactions per week across industries and use cases, from digital advertising to online banking to e-commerce. Our vision is collective protection across all industries - modern digital defense requires this level of data visibility and collaboration. A good defense also requires an offense, in the form of collective disruptions and takedowns. We must operate beyond detection and blocking to change the cost of the attack. This is a principle we apply continuously in the protection of our customers.
Our fundraising journey over the last few years has been one of building the broader team. At the heart of this mission is the people. That starts with the team of humans on the front lines and it goes all the way to the circle of investors around the company. We all have roles to play in building a company that solves an important and difficult problem for the internet. With WestCap, Night Dragon, Goldman Sachs, ClearSky, and our additional investors, our mission to protect the integrity of the internet only becomes stronger. It is not an easy mission, but success starts with the right team. And we have a great team.
