What happened: Vancouver-based Trulioo has announced a capital raise of $70 million
Why it matters: The latest Series C funding round brings the company’s capital investments to $96.6 million
Demand for tech jobs in Vancouver is about to ratchet up even further as one local firm preps for a hiring spree in the wake of a $70-million raise.
Trulioo Information Services Inc. announced Tuesday (September 17) the conclusion of a Series C funding round to the tune of $60 million.
The company also revealed an additional $10 million in previously unannounced investments, bringing its total capital investments up to $96.6 million since its founding in 2011.
“I hope that it gives us a little more bandwidth,” said CEO Stephen Ufford, whose company specializes in online identity verification.
“In terms of the scale of our platform and demand for it, we’re grossly understaffed.”
Trulioo has access to multiple data sources, such as credit bureaus or utility companies, to help verify identities for other organizations' customers.
Kickstarter PBC and PayPal Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: PYPL) are among those that have used Trulioo’s services.
The company currently employs 130 workers — up from 30 workers four years ago — and Ufford said the company recently doubled the amount of floor space they have access to in Vancouver.
The additional facility has capacity for 100 more workers, which will be hired within the next year or two.
But Ufford acknowledged that hiring workers to meet the demand has been the No. 1 challenge for Trulioo.
“We do believe the environment here and Trulioo’s financial trajectory will allow us to bring people to Canada,” he said, adding about 70% of the company’s local workforce is made up of people new to the country.
“If you want to be an anchor company here in Vancouver you need to capture all the opportunities, so the funding round is designed to allow us to scale beyond our current size a little faster.”
The company also has international offices in San Francisco and Dublin.
The Series C funding round was led by Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, with participation from Citi Ventures, Santander InnoVentures and American Express Ventures.
“We’ve followed the Trulioo story closely for several years and have been consistently impressed with the company’s ability to serve some of the largest and most sophisticated enterprises in the world. We are excited to support Trulioo as it continues to innovate and helps to enhance trust and privacy in increasingly digital world,” Chase Williams, a growth equity inverstor at Goldman Sachs’ merchant banking division, said in a statement.
Blumberg Capital and BDC Capital were responsible for the $10 million investment from last year that had been previously unannounced.
