The biometric authentication startup Keyless has brought in another $3 million in seed funding. The latest round was led by the Italian venture capital firm P101 SGR, with additional support from Primomiglio SGR, Inventures, and Gumi Crypto Capital. 

The latest influx of cash brings Keyless’ total amount of seed funding to $9.2 million. According to Keyless, the new funds were secured based on the strength of a trio of new partnerships with Microsoft Azure AD B2C, OneLogin, and Auth0, all three of which are major identity and access management providers.

The $3 million reflects investor confidence in those new partnerships. Keyless noted that while companies like OneLogin and Auth0 provide other organizations with solutions that make it easier to manage employee and customer identities, they do not always develop their own biometric authentication software, and need to form alliances with companies that do. Keyless happens to be one such provider, which is why the company believes that the new partnerships will help Keyless make connections with a larger number of end users.

“Traditional multi-factor authentication can be cumbersome, expensive, and susceptible to new attack avenues,” said Keyless CEO Andrea Carmignani. “By partnering with IAM providers, we can serve the market’s need with innovative authentication solutions that are not only intuitive for users, but offer stronger protection against emerging mobile security and privacy threats.”

“Keyless offers a sophisticated solution that helps authentication and identity management providers put the user and their privacy first,” added P1010 SGR Partner Giuseppe Donvito. “Embracing biometric technology that utilises a distributed cloud network not only helps eliminate fraud, phishing and account takeover threats, it also ensures that sensitive biometric information is never at risk of being lost, stolen or mishandled.”

Keyless previously brought in $2.2 million in seed funding in a round that closed in 2019. The company is hoping to capture a portion of a biometric systems market that is expected to be worth $68.6 billion by 2025.

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April 16, 2021 – by Eric Weiss