Illuma Labs, a leader in voice authentication technology for banking contact centers, announced it has raised $9 million in Series A funding led by LiveOak Ventures, with participation from Forefront Venture Partners, Curql Fund, UsNet, Capital Factory, Connexus, and TDECU. This funding will accelerate the development of Illuma’s voice verification solutions, addressing threats like fraud, voice cloning, and deep fakes and expanding its reach to more credit unions and banks nationwide.
With a diverse career of 27+ years, CTO Jeremy Whittington has excelled in roles ranging from developer and architect to journalist, advisor, and serial entrepreneur. And under Jeremy’s leadership, the Illuma team has successfully converted innovations in voice biometric authentication into state-of-the-art products that are easy for financial institutions of all sizes to operationalize.
The latest addition to the Illuma team, Amy Travers, is another major win for the organization. Travers, formerly Regional VP of Security and Biometrics at Nuance, joined Illuma this year to systemize and scale the sales effort across the U.S.
The Illuma team was celebrated this year for Innovations in Fraud, winning the CreditUnions.com award for the fraud category. And this accolade was followed by recognition of the company’s leadership in the inaugural list of AI 75 by Dallas Innovates for pioneering work in artificial intelligence.
Illuma Labs’ flagship product is Illuma Shield, which replaces traditional knowledge-based authentication practices with an effortless and secure real-time voice authentication solution to enhance caller experience, improve operational efficiency, and prevent fraud in credit union and community bank contact centers.
KEY QUOTES:
“While we are excited about the capital infusion to accelerate our development of fraud prevention and deep fake detection tools, we are equally excited about bringing in new partners to fuel Illuma’s continued commercial growth. LiveOak Ventures and Forefront Venture Partners bring invaluable operating expertise and industry connections to help Illuma scale to the next level. And we are deeply appreciative of the continued support from Curql Fund, UsNet, Capital Factory, Connexus, and TDECU.”
-Illuma founder and CEO Milind Borkar
“My career started in customer service, and that has been a primary driver for the past 20 years. It’s exciting to work on technology that can reduce fraud and improve the customer experience at the same time. A rare achievement.”
-Jeremy Whittington, CTO
“With Illuma’s position in the Fintech sector as a provider that delivers state-of-the-art voice biometrics accessible for financial institutions of all sizes, there is a clear growth path to becoming the preferred provider of voice authentication and fraud prevention solutions in this space.”
-Venu Shamapant, Founding Partner at LiveOak Ventures
“Too often, adoption of increased security measures results in less convenient, less pleasant member service interactions. That said, our collaborative four-year Illuma partnership and our strong track record with their innovative Illuma Shield voice biometric technology have proven just the opposite. Not only are we doing more to mitigate fraud while ensuring the safety of our members’ data and assets, but we’ve streamlined their member service experience by eliminating traditional, often burdensome, out-of-wallet authentication questions. With Illuma Shield, we’ve shortened individual call times by one minute on average, significantly reducing our operational expenses, and affording our members and employees a much more engaging, efficient, and secure experience.”
-Chad Rogers, Executive VP and COO at Connexus
“It’s an exciting move to be embedded with a team that is innovating so rapidly to address emerging threats in fraud, and making voice biometric technology affordable for community banks and credit unions.”
-Amy Travers
