Announcing our $26M Series B Fundraise
It’s a very exciting week at Truepic’s (remote-first) HQ. We’re announcing our $26M Series B fundraise, led by M12 (Microsoft’s Venture Fund) — with participation from Adobe Inc., Sony’s Innovation Growth Fund, Hearst Ventures, and individuals from Stone Point Capital. This raise brings Truepic’s total outside funding to $36M.
For those that already know our company — our newest partners will come as little surprise. We’ve worked closely with many of these groups on industry leading efforts such as the Content Authenticity Initiative and Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity. Each partner shares a fundamental belief that the authenticity and provenance of visual media is best determined at the time of capture— and they are backing Truepic as the leader in this emerging sector. Our team couldn’t be more excited to have such a strategic and influential group of companies supporting us as we enter our next phase of growth.
Our plan is very simple — continue supporting our valued customers & partners with the most innovative image authenticity solutions on the market. This starts with the upcoming launch of the much anticipated Truepic SDK.
Why?
Visual media is at the center of nearly every enterprise, financial, and personal interaction we have each day. As a society, we have a constant stream of visual communication coming at us from every angle. We may be consuming the news, our social media feeds, renting a home for our family vacation, meeting a new partner online, making a purchase on a marketplace, amongst so much more. Visual communication is at the center of each of these interactions, and fundamentally, they all lack trust.
Unfortunately, seeing is no longer believing, as trust in digital photos and videos is fundamentally broken. While our insurance company would love to allow us to send in a quick photo of a fender bender for reimbursement-they’re also dealing with $40B+ in annual fraud due to bad actors and organized fraud rings. This trust gap across the internet has resulted in significant inefficiencies, financial loss, and brand degradation in the companies we’ve come to love & rely on, and that negatively impacts all of us.
As the importance and speed of information transfer continues to grow — we are now subject to even more pressing issues, including disinformation in political elections, mis- and dis-information around vaccines, and so much more. While the commercial implications of this shift are dramatic — the societal implications are potentially devastating.
Visual media is at the center of every interaction we have online. Truepic exists to help people see the truth.
Approach
Truepic is built on the principle that verifying the integrity of imaging data at the time it originates is the most accurate & scalable approach to correcting this trend. We call our patented core technology ‘Controlled Capture’ — and leverage the latest approaches in secure sensor acquisition, machine learning, & cryptography to ensure photos & videos captured by our mobile camera software have known origin & authenticity.
Truepic’s first product offering, launched in 2018, is called Truepic Vision. Vision is a SaaS platform that enables our partners to instantly gather & review images & videos that have known origin & authenticity. Since launch, we’ve grown to service 100+ valued customers & partners including Accion Opportunity Fund, Equifax, EXL Service Inc, Ford Motor Company, Palomar Holdings Inc., Transunion, United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) and so many more.
To-date — Truepic has verified over 5 Million photos for our partners. Here’s the first slide from our Series B deck showing what that growth looks like from launch through EoQ1 21.
Those 5 Million images have helped each of our partners make better down-stream decisions for their customers. Whether it be an insurance claim, a loan decision, or an international organization verifying programs in a conflict zone — Truepic Vision is helping improve decision making across the board.
What’s next…
We are continuing to grow Vision, our turn-key SaaS platform for collecting verified documentation. This product has proven to be critical in a world where remote access to documentation is a must-have. If you have a critical need for verifying a person, business, or asset, Truepic Vision can help.
Next, we are launching the much-anticipated SDK product, called Truepic Lens. Lens will integrate directly into any native iOS or Android application, allowing for seamless capture of high-trust images & videos directly in-app. This product is flexible by design, and aims to power the core camera across the entire app ecosystem to improve trust across our favorite services.
We are also continuing to invest heavily in both the Content Authenticity Initiative and Coalition for Content Provenance & Authenticity. Our belief is that a standardized way to store, transmit, and display digital media with known provenance will only help expedite the distribution & value of high integrity imagery. Which, helps expedite our own mission of restoring trust in visual media across the internet.
This financing represents the largest investment to-date in provenance based media, and one of the top investments in the broader ‘truth technology’ sector. We’re extremely excited to deploy these new funds to improve the future of visual media for our customers, partners, consumers, and society. We’re also grateful to have the support of such a well-respected group of investors, with Microsoft’s venture arm — M12, Adobe, Sony Innovation, Hearst, and individuals from Stone Point Capital all joining our cap table.
We’re just at the start of our journey — and our team is more well-equipped than ever to alter the course of trust online. If you’re interested in joining us for the ride — we’re hiring! Please keep an eye on our Careers page for new postings. Learn more about our company here.
