PALO ALTO, CA, Innovator in modern authentication, today announced it has raised Series B funding in the amount of $16.5 million.
Nok Nok Labs, an innovator in modern authentication, today announced it has raised Series B funding in the amount of $16.5 million from Lenovo Group Limited, and current investors DCM and ONSET Ventures. George He, SVP and President of Ecosystem & Cloud Services Group at Lenovo will join the Nok Nok Labs Board of Directors. Both Lenovo and Nok Nok Labs are founding members of the FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance.
With this latest round of funding, Nok Nok Labs will accelerate the development and reach of the recently announced NNL S3 authentication suite, the first centralized platform that will enable the usage of a broad range of FIDO-Ready devices. The company will also expand its sales, business development and marketing efforts, and continue to drive partnerships through the device ecosystems following the recently announced Trustonic and Synaptics partnerships. Together with the company's Series A financing, Nok Nok Labs has raised a total of $31.5M to date.
'The announcement of this round is perfectly timed to help us accelerate our work to bring to the market the FIDO Alliance's vision of a unified and standard online authentication environment,' said Phillip Dunkelberger, President and CEO, Nok Nok Labs. 'We're very excited to be working more closely with Lenovo as a strategic partner given the rapid expansion of mobile devices and services in the Chinese market and Lenovo's global reach.'
'Our strategic work over the past year with Nok Nok Labs as a part of building the FIDO Alliance obviously had a great impact on this investment decision,' commented Dennis Song, GM of Strategy Technology Alliance at Lenovo. 'There is incredible momentum in the device market globally, and together with Nok Nok Labs, we're driving hard to provide better authentication platforms and increased security in the computing ecosystem.'
Ramesh Kesanupalli, the visionary behind the FIDO Alliance and Founder of Nok Nok Labs, launched the company with a management team of industry experts in 2011 to transform online authentication for modern computing. The company produces client and server software that leverages the existing security capabilities on a user's device such as a built-in fingerprint sensor, camera or Trusted Platform Module (TPM) in order to provide user-friendly, strong authentication to any application. Unlike current siloed authentication solutions, Nok Nok Labs allows organizations to support a wide range of authentication technologies from a single, unified platform.
About Nok Nok Labs
Nok Nok Labs, Inc., based in Palo Alto, CA, was founded to transform online authentication for modern computing. The company is backed by a team of security industry veterans from PGP, Netscape, Oracle, PayPal and Phoenix that have deep experience in building Internet scale security protocols and products. The company's ambition is to enable end-to-end trust across the web using authentication methods that are natural to end-users and provide strong proof of identity. For more information, visit
www.noknok.com.
About Lenovo Group Ltd.
Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) is a US$34 billion personal technology company - the largest PC maker worldwide and an emerging PC Plus leader - serving customers in more than 160 countries. Dedicated to exceptionally engineered PCs and mobile internet devices, Lenovo's business is built on product innovation, a highly-efficient global supply chain and strong strategic execution. Formed by Lenovo Group's acquisition of the former IBM Personal Computing Division, the Company develops, manufactures and markets reliable, high-quality, secure and easy-to-use technology products and services. Its product lines include legendary Think-branded commercial PCs and Idea-branded consumer PCs, as well as servers, workstations, and a family of mobile internet devices, including tablets and smart phones. Lenovo, a global Fortune 500 company, has major research centers in Yamato, Japan; Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, China; and Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information see www.lenovo.com.
About DCM
DCM is an early stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Beijing and Tokyo with more than $2.5 billion under management. DCM has investments in more than 200 technology companies across the United States and Asia and provides hands-on operational guidance and a global network of business and financial resources. DCM has backed industry-leading companies such as 51job, About.com, Clearwire, eDreams, Foundry Networks, Kabu.com, Sling Media, SMIC, and VanceInfo as well as upcoming startups such as Bill.com, Bridgelux, Kakao, and Happy Elements. Recent successes (IPOs and M&As) include China-based 58.com, Renren, BitAuto, Dangdang, Luxin and Vipshop; Japan-based Pokelabo (GREE) and StarFlyer and U.S.-based Fortinet, PGP (Symantec) and SandForce (LSI). For more information, visit: www.dcm.com.
About ONSET Ventures
ONSET Ventures specializes in providing start-up, follow-on, and intellectual capital to entrepreneurs and early-stage technology ventures. ONSET helps transform world-class ideas into sustainable and valuable businesses, through a process of 'venture craftsmanship.' The firm has partnered with start-ups since 1984 and has more than $1 billion under management. ONSET Ventures is located in Menlo Park, California. For more information, visit: www.onset.com.