Pindrop Series D funding round backed by Goldman Sachs, Vitruvian

Pindrop

Vijay Balasubramaniyan, co-founder, chief executive officer and chief technology officer of Pindrop.

Security start-up Pindrop has raised $90 million from investors including Vitruvian Partners and Goldman Sachs.

The seven-year-old firm, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) technology to detect fraudulent phone calls, said Wednesday that it would use the latest funding to boost its European expansion plans.

Vitruvian, a European private equity firm that has invested in the likes of Just Eat and Farfetch, led the funding round, while Goldman Sachs and Singapore’s corporate investment arm EDBI were among new investors that backed the deal.

The company is also backed by Google parent Alphabet, Citigroup and Silicon Valley venture capital stalwart Andreessen Horowitz.

Atlanta, Georgia-based Pindrop uses machine-learning technology that is fed large amounts of data to learn the difference between a legitimate and fraudulent phone call.

Pindrop says its tech can analyze 1,380 features of a voice from a phone call to help identify information such as the caller’s location and what type of phone they’re using, creating what it calls a “phoneprint.” Currently, it analyzes about 650 million calls a year, and expects that number to increase to 1.1 billion by the end of 2018.

Vijay Balasubramaniyan, Pindrop’s co-founder, chief executive officer and chief technology officer, said the firm’s accuracy when it comes to detecting fraudulent phone calls is around “99.995 percent,” adding that it has caught roughly $350 million worth of fraud attempts this year alone.