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ForgeRock’s CEO said that its $93.5m Series E funding round will likely be the last round of funding before the company pursues an IPO.
On Tuesday (21 April), San Francisco-based digital identity provider ForgeRock announced that it has closed $93.5m in Series E funding.
The round was led by Riverwood Capital, with participation from existing investors including Accel, Meritech Capital, Foundation Capital and KKR Growth.
To date, the start-up has now raised more than $230m since it was founded in 2010 by Hermann Svoren, Jonathan Scudder, Lasse Andresen, Steve Ferris and Viktor Ake. The company said that its technology is now used by more than 1,100 enterprise customers that collectively manage more than 2bn identities.
ForgeRock’s platform aims to help people access the connected world “safely and simply” through a digital identity platform designed for cloud environments that ensures that the people accessing the services are exactly who they say they are.
The start-up has seen increased demand for its services in recent weeks as more companies turn to remote working to limit the spread of Covid-19. Speaking to TechCrunch, the start-up’s CEO Fran Rosch said that this will likely be ForgeRock’s last funding round ahead of an IPO.
Funding plans
In a statement, the start-up said that its plans for the funding are “straightforward.” ForgeRock plans to invest in research and development, cloud, global sales and market awareness to accelerate growth in the coming months. The company will also continue to invest in its ForgeRock Identity Cloud.
Rosch said: “To be competitive today, companies need to deepen their relationships with their customers and improve the productivity and connectivity of their workforce.”
Since January, the company won the SC Magazine Trust Award for Best Authentication and achieved the highest score in the 2020 Gartner Peer Insights ‘Voice of the Customer’ research on identity governance and administration (IGA).
ForgeRock’s list of customers includes the BBC, BMW and the UK’s department for work and pensions, among other large organisations. Some of ForgeRock’s competitors include LastPass, Okta, Duo Security and Ping Identity.
‘Mission critical’
Rosch continued: “Increasingly, our platform is becoming mission critical to the largest organisations in the word and we take our responsibility seriously to deliver on their expectations.
“This has become even more pronounced as remote work and e-commerce has surged in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Completing this funding round in the current climate is a testament to the relevance of ForgeRock.”
While announcing the funding, the company said that its team has grown from fewer than 50 people in 2010 to more than 600 employees in offices around the world.
Jeff Parks, co-founder and managing partner of Riverwood Capital, said: “ForgeRock’s comprehensive platform is very well positioned to capitalise on the enormous opportunity in the identity and access management market.”
