San Francisco-based Proxy recently announced it emerged from stealth mode and raised a $13.6 million Series A round of funding. Proxy is known for its smartphone-powered Universal Identity Signal technology — which gives people frictionless access to the things that they use every day and eliminates the need for apps, passwords, and keycards.
According to a recent survey of office workers, about half of them said that they have to take out their keycard or fob at least five times per day at the office. And one in five lost their keycard at least once in the last year.
Proxy’s product is called Proxy Signal. And Proxy Signal’s initial use case is being utilized by companies like WeWork and Dropbox. These companies are using Proxy Signal for providing thousands of people with secure frictionless access and personalized experiences in the workplace. In the future, Proxy will provide B2C solutions for vehicles, public transportation, finance, retail, etc.
WeWork VP of Product Management Jack Krawczyk said that the company uses Proxy’s technology to connect member communities and employees around the world while also enabling ways to explore new ways to seamlessly connect members with their workspaces. And Dropbox’s Physical Security Systems Architect Chris Bauer pointed out that Proxy gives their employees, contractors, and visitors a “seamless smartphone-enabled access experience they love, while actually bolstering security.”
“There are 20 billion connected devices and 7.5 billion humans on earth. We believe Proxy Signals are the future of how everyone will securely authenticate and interact with everything in the physical world,” said Proxy CEO and co-founder Denis Mars in a statement. “To achieve this, we created an entirely new identity protocol over Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) that represents humans in the physical world via their smartphones.”
Proxy Signal will be used for secured doors, elevators, and turnstiles. And Proxy Signal is being used by more than 50 companies as driven by an urgent demand for eliminating keycards, badges, ID cards, QR codes, and visitor passes.
This round of funding was led by Kleiner Perkins with participation from WeWork, Y Combinator, Coatue Management, and several leading industry executives. Including this round, Proxy has raised a total of $16.6 million in funding to date.
“The big idea behind Proxy – that people can use a secure, universally accepted digital identity signal on their smartphone to access important things in the physical world – is incredibly timely and exciting, and it’s what attracted us to invest in the company,” added Kleiner Perkins general partner Wen Hsieh. “Proxy’s initial physical access market is large and untapped, and the applicability of the technology to other verticals is obvious. There is tremendous potential here, and my partners and I are excited to back this team.”
