As the need for online fraud prevention increases, Arkose Labs continues to attract the attention of investors.
The San Francisco-based technology provider raised $70 million in a Series C round this week, bringing its total funding to $114 million.
Softbank Vision Fund 2 led the funding round, with participation from Wells Fargo Strategic Capital and previous investors M12 and PayPal Ventures.
"We believe Arkose Labs has cracked the code in fighting cybercrime, by making it financially non-viable for criminals,” Nagraj Kashyap, managing partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, said in a Tuesday press release. “Last year Arkose Labs analyzed more than 15 billion online sessions, stopping 4.6 billion attacks and wasting 40 million hours of fraudsters’ time."
Arkose Labs' "unique approach to eliminating the rewards for criminals" addresses the major problems facing businesses accepting more transactions online, Kashyap added.
Rather than playing a constant game of whack-a-mole with attackers, Arkose Labs says it built its platform by first looking at how fraudsters make money by attacking digital platforms. In combining real-time risk classification of traffic with interactive enforcement challenges, the Arkose Labs platform thwarts automated attacks and roots out coordinated human-driven attacks.
“As the digital world continues to evolve at a rapid pace, it is necessary that the approach to combating online fraud balances protection with a seamless and pleasant customer experience,” said Basil Darwish, managing director for Wells Fargo Strategic Capital. “Arkose Labs addresses the root of the issue by diminishing the underlying financial incentives often associated with cyber-attacks. The company’s rapid growth is a testament to the effectiveness of their product philosophy and we’re excited to see their next phase of expansion.”
Arkose Labs says the new round of funding will go toward platform development, hiring and global expansion. The company, which doubled its headcount last year, is adding staff in North America, Australia and Europe.
“We have partners who match our ambition for eradicating fraud online by means of disrupting the economic ROI for bad actors," Kevin Gosschalk, Arkose Labs founder and CEO, said in the release. "We are building a portfolio of capabilities that can adapt and respond based on the fraudsters’ techniques to ensure we are maximizing the impact to them whilst minimizing any form of friction to good users.”
Arkose Labs' expansion in the financial services industry signals the growing digital shift in banking, and requires a customer-centric approach "that kicks the bad guys out of online operations, while maintaining the highest levels of convenience and usability that financial services operations require,” Gosschalk added.
Arkose Labs opened its regional office last year in London to better serve Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
Businesses using Arkose Labs protection include Electronic Arts, Dropbox, Microsoft, PayPal and Sony Interactive Entertainment.
