Digital Safety Company Bark Raises $9 Million In Series A Funding

By Noah Long ● Aug 30, 2018

Bark, an Atlanta-based digital safety solution company, has raised $9 million in Series A funding. This round of funding was led by Signal Peak Ventures. And Two Sigma Ventures and existing investors Symmetrical Ventures, Fuel Capital, Hallett Capital, and Atlanta Seed Company also participated. Bark plans to use the funding to broaden its product offering and expand into more markets.

“We are very excited to welcome Signal Peak and Two Sigma as new investors, and look forward to working closely with them both to accelerate our growth and positive impact on children’s lives,” said Bark CEO and founder Brian Bason in a statement.

Developed in collaboration with youth advisors, child psychologists, and law enforcement agencies, Bark is known for developing a parental control phone tracker app for iPhones and Androids to prevent cyberbullying and smartphone addiction. Bark is able to monitor text messages, YouTube history, email and social media. In order to identify and alert parents about potential threats such as depression, Internet bullies, and other problems, Bark utilizes advanced machine learning.

After the tragedy in Parkland, Florida in February 2018, Bark said it was going to offer its platform for free at any schools that have Google’s G Suite for Education. And the same functionality was added for schools with Microsoft Office 365 Education recently. With this technology, school administrators can be alerted of issues detected in school-issued emails, chat, documents, and cloud storage.

Bark has rapidly grown since launching in 2015. Over 2 million children have been protected with Bark thus far. And Bark has analyzed more than 1 billion messages across text, email, and social media.

Parents can subscribe to Bark for $9 per month ($99 per year) per family. And this will provide monitoring across 25 platforms.