Company Launched by Eller Professor Secures $35M in Series B Funding to Capitalize on Expanding Behavioral Analytics Market Opportunity

Nov. 5, 2021
Joe Valacich, in a black t-shirt that says "Neuro-ID," leans back against a white wall with red circle and line decals.

Neuro-ID, a company co-launched in 2014 by Joe Valacich, Munsinger Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the University of Arizona Eller College of Management, today announced that it has raised $35 million in Series B funding led by Canapi Ventures.

Existing investors Fin VC and TTV Capital also participated in the round. Neuro-ID will use the additional capital to accelerate its mission of unlocking conversion and optimizing fraud screening for digital organizations of all sizes. Neuro-ID delivers real-time behavioral analytics solutions that combat online fraud, increase conversion rates and improve customer experiences.

“These issues have created a huge market opportunity for Neuro-ID to help our clients see their best customers very early in the digital process,” says Valacich. “The additional capital from Walker and the team at Canapi provides the resources and deep domain expertise needed to fuel our growth in the years ahead.”

Neuro-ID’s proprietary platform, Friction IndexⓇ, simplifies access to an organization's behavioral data to reveal key insights into the intent and emotion behind each user interaction. By providing visibility into behavior, Neuro-ID detects genuine customers and isolates fraud in real time. As a result, customers can complete transactions with minimal friction, while risk teams are alerted to fraudulent behavior before a loss occurs. Neuro-ID helps ensure seamless digital customer experiences across a variety of industries and works with leading brands including Intuit, Square, Affirm, OppFi and Elephant Insurance amongst others.

“Neuro-ID enables its clients to tap into the real-time behavior and intent of the person behind the screen,” says Valacich. “With the false decline problem currently 70 times larger than the global fraud problem, this new dimension of visibility enables organizations to identify and convert genuine customers that had previously been declined or subjected to unnecessary friction.”

Tech Launch Arizona (TLA), the UArizona office that commercializes inventions stemming from research, helped the co-founders get the company off the ground, from inception to IP protection to strategic development.

Neuro-ID has been on a strong growth trajectory, reflecting increasing demand for behavioral data in digital companies. Today’s milestone builds on the $7 million Series A funding raised in December 2020 and follows an active year which saw the company grow clients and revenue four-fold.

Valacich is a fellow of the Association for Information Systems (AIS). In addition to co-founder of Neuro-ID, he is also chairman and chief science officer. He is a prolific scholar, publishing more than 250 scholarly articles in numerous prestigious journals and conferences. He also has multiple issued and pending patents focused on analyzing fine-grained human-computer interaction data to infer user intent and confidence. Software based on this work is being used by many of the world’s leading online platforms, processing millions of customer account applications per month. He earned his PhD in MIS at the University of Arizona in 1989. He also has a BS in computer science and an MBA from the University of Montana.