Ciudad de México — Startup Incode Technologies said Tuesday it raised $220 million in its Series B funding round led by General Atlantic and SoftBank, bringing its valuation to $1.25 billion, becoming the most recent unicorn with operations in Mexico. The firm, launched by entrepreneur Ricardo Amper in 2015, is now valued at $1.25 billion, some 10 times over its prior mark.
In addition to SoftBank and General Atlantic, JP Morgan, Capital One and Coinbase participated in the round with additional funds.
The Series B round less than seven months after Incode raised $25 million in its Series A, which was announced in March of this year.
Incode, an artificial intelligence solutions firm for digital identity verification, has local, regional and global companies as clients which use its platform to interact with their final customers.
According to founder Ricardo Amper, Incode allows users of the platform to register and check-in with service providers such as banks, hotels and hospitals. The firm uses proprietary facial-recognition technology with development in the US, Mexico and Serbia.
Some of Incode’s customers are companies such as American Express, Citibanamex as well as startups such as RappiBank.
“We have created an exceptional, people-friendly experience,” Amper said. The company has also developed biometric management platforms for manufacturing companies, universities and retail firms in Mexico to control and monitor secure access in the context of pandemic and hygiene protocols.
It also provides solutions to banks and fintechs that require facial recognition of instruments such as the voting credential of the National Electoral Institute.
In a statement, the firm, founded by Amper in 2015, said that “completing the fundraising is SVCI (Silicon Valley CISO Investments), a group of more than 50 technology leaders, the founders of dLocal, who join existing investors such as DN Capital, 3L Capital, Framework Ventures and others.”
The firm is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with principal operations in Mexico City and several countries in Latin America and Europe.
A year of unicorns
Since Kavak debuted late last year as the first Mexican unicorn-sized startup, three more local companies have entered that category in 2021: Bitso, Clip and Konfio.
With Incode, this group of unicorns (private, technology-based startups with a valuation of over $1 billion) will be joined by only the second company that is not a fintech (Kavak is in the business of buying and selling used cars).
With the $220 million of this round, Incode marks a double milestone: it becomes the first unicorn in the region in just its Series B, and with this amount it will occupy third place in the top 10 financing rounds reported in the past six months, after the $700 million of Kavak and the $250 million of Brazil’s Facily.
