Proxy raises $42m to expand global footprint

The provider of digital identities for the physical world, has closed a Series B funding round led by Scale Venture Partners with existing investors Kleiner Perkins and Y Combinator and new investors Silicon Valley Bank and West Ventures.

Proxy is already in use by 60+ companies, as large as Accenture and Dropbox and thousands of people across the globe, from the US and UK to Australia and Japan. The financing will fuel a rapid expansion of Proxy’s breakthrough technology set and catalyse international growth across Asia, Europe, and North America.

Proxy’s identity signal, emitted from a smartphone, gives people frictionless access to any space or device, similar to a universal single sign-on for the physical world. Headquartered in San Francisco, the company has already expanded its international operations with the recent opening of offices in New York, Chicago, Shanghai, Taipei and Sydney to serve its exploding customer base in those regions, with additional offices planned for Europe and Asia in 2020. The company is also hiring for its growing engineering, marketing, and customer success teams.

“You can’t have a conversation with Proxy’s founders and customers and not come away completely excited about the potential for this technology,” said Alex Niehenke, partner at Scale Venture Partners. “There are so many applications – Proxy is already seeing great success in commercial real estate and has really just scratched the surface in terms of what can be done with identity signals.

Denis Mars, Proxy

Denis Mars, co-founder and CEO of Proxy, said: “It’s fantastic to see the enthusiasm commercial real estate and enterprises have for creating new experiences with identity signals.

“With this new round, we’re going to double down on transforming the workplace experience and begin expanding into new verticals. We’re turning Proxy into the de facto digital identification technology for the physical world and look forward to working with Scale and our other investors to do so.”

Proxy provides people with frictionless mobile access throughout secured buildings and gives users the ability to completely personalise their workplace experiences. Proxy is positioning to become the standard for physical world identity verification and service personalisation across industries such as ride-sharing, commercial and public transportation, hospitality, and entertainment. People own their Proxy ID and unique identity signal, and their data can never be sold or exploited by marketers.