ID R&D: This Company Is Building Some Impressive AI-Based Voice And Face Anti-Spoofing Technologies

By Dan Anderson ● Jun 6, 2019
  • ID R&D, a New York-based biometrics technology provider, announced recently that it raised $5.7 million in funding led by GSR Ventures

ID R&D is a New York-based biometrics technology provider that is developing AI-based voice and face anti-spoofing technologies founded by Alexey Khitrov (CEO) and Konstantin Simonchik. Recently, ID R&D announced it raised $5.7 million in funding led by GSR Ventures with participation from existing investor Gagarin Capital.

ID R&D has seen rapid adoption of its technology and it has been operating cash flow since 2017. Last year, ID R&D doubled its number of sales contracts and it opened a West Coast headquarters location to accommodate the doubling of its staff.

In Q1 2019, ID R&D grew its customer base by an additional 25% including adding a major biometric integrator company and a major semiconductor company. This round of funding will be used for expanding its engineering teams and to accelerate marketing and international sales.

“What we’ve consistently heard from our customers is that ID R&D’s technologies and solutions stand alone in offering a vastly simplified user experience that doesn’t sacrifice the security of authentication,” said Khitrov in a statement. And Khitrov pointed out that Grand View Research was forecasting the speech and voice recognition market size to hit nearly $32 billion by 2025 so “businesses are racing to keep up with demand for authentication that works across multiple platforms and is as convenient as it is secure.”

Due to the rapid growth of the conversational interface (CI), businesses are increasingly recognizing the need for authentication solutions that balances convenience and security. And spoken passwords, security questions, and texted or emailed passcodes have created cumbersome steps to the login process that are disruptive to a user’s experience and vulnerable to compromise by bad actors.

“As we talk to CTOs and CISOs, it’s clear that rapid expansion in the prevalence and functionality of voice-enabled applications and devices has increased the need to protect these access points and the services they provide,” added GSR Ventures partner Sunny Kumar, MD. “ID R&D has developed the best voice biometric authentication solution, providing a critical layer of security to these devices. We are thrilled to be partnering with ID R&D to make voice biometrics the new standard in authentication.”

And as customers have been engaging deeply with intelligent assistants, chatbots, IoT devices, and mobile/web apps, enterprises have been looking for ways to offer a better user experience by verifying customers quickly and accurately.

Founded in 2016, ID R&D has been combining the latest scientific research and development for delivering multiple biometric modalities for frictionless and securing biometric authentication. And unlike other products in the market, ID R&D’s core technologies and solutions require little or no involvement from the user — which eliminates unnecessary elements of the authentication user experience.

Beyond recognizing users, ID R&D also offers passive anti-spoofing capabilities that can distinguish synthesized or recorded speech from a live user’s voice and detect fraudulent login attempts using a picture, video, or model of a user’s face.

“We have been fascinated by the scope and applicability of ID R&D’s technology since the day of our first investment in the company. Its solutions complement a lot of industries and ID R&D is well-positioned to completely transform the way user authentication works,” explained Gagarin Capital co-founder Nicholas Davidov. “ID R&D has an impressive track record to date and we look forward to the company achieving even greater success with the help of new funding.”