A Silicon Valley digital identity provider has raised £76m which will help it grow its significant UK presence.
Forgerock, which has a major hub in Bristol, employs 211 people in the UK – a third of its global workforce. Its growing customer list includes BBC, BMW and the Department for Work & Pensions.
About half of ForgeRock’s business is based in EMEA, with annual recurring revenues of more than $100m. More than 1,100 organisations use the ForgeRock Identity Platform.
The Series E funding round was led by Riverwood Capital with existing investors Accel, Meritech Capital, Foundation Capital and KKR Growth also participating.
Riverwood Capital co-founder and managing partner Jeff Parks will join the ForgeRock board of directors.
The new round of funding will be invested in ForgeRock’s cloud and automation technology and in its customer success and go to market operations.
“ForgeRock has large engineering and customer success teams in the UK, based mainly in Bristol, so these investments will help drive further expansion in the UK,” the company told BusinessCloud.
The BBC uses ForgeRock’s platform to manage and authenticate 23,000 employee and 45 million consumer identities. ForgeRock is used to provide a seamless, personalised experience across all of the BBC’s digital channels.
“The user only needs to log-in once and they can then easily and securely access recommended content across applications,” the spokesperson continued.
“In recent weeks, the BBC has benefited from ForgeRock’s ability to help companies scale up the amount of cloud-computing capacity in response to the global pandemic which has resulted in massive spikes of users tuning in for COVID-19 related new updates and requiring authentication.
“Because ForgeRock’s platform is AI-powered, the company can authenticate 60,000 identities per second. In contrast, its nearest competitors authenticate less than 10,000 identities per second.”
One of ForgeRock’s founders Steve Ferris, now the company’s EVP Global Customer Success, is British.
He set up the Bristol office shortly after the company was founded.
“It has proven to be a great location due to its proximity to a number of good universities and the strong pool of tech talent in the area,” the company said.
Parks added: “ForgeRock’s comprehensive platform is very well-positioned to capitalise on the enormous opportunity in the Identity & Access Management market.
“ForgeRock is the leader in solving a wide range of workforce and consumer identity use cases for the Global 2000 and is trusted by some of the largest companies to manage millions of user identities.
“We have seen the growth acceleration and are thrilled to partner with this leadership team.”