Atlanta’s Pindrop Security raises series B round of $35M to fight phone fraud

Pindrop Security announced today it has raised $35 million in a round led by Institutional Venture Partners.

The Atlanta-based company has been gaining traction in recent years with its “acoustic fingerprinting” technology that lets it identify people’s voices, locations, and devices, which in turn helps it build a data set of fraudsters.

“Over six billion individuals across the globe have access to a phone, yet there has been little security innovation in phone or voice,” said Somesh Dash, general partner at IVP, in a press release. “Pindrop has revolutionized phone and call center security and is poised for impressive growth.”

In addition to IVP, investors in the latest round include Andreessen Horowitz, Citi Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, and Webb Investment Network. Most of those firms had already invested in the $11 million round that Pindrop raised in June 2013.

“Large financial institutions have traditionally invested heavily to protect themselves against physical and online attacks, but now the bad guys have moved to the phone channel,” said Paul Judge, Pindrop’s chairman, in the press release. “This phone-based crime costs companies billions of dollars, which has made the demand for Pindrop products incredibly high.”