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Estonia gets its sixth unicorn as Veriff raises $100m from Tiger

Co-led by Tiger Global and Alkeon, the round values the company at $1.5bn. 

By Anisah Osman Britton

Veriff team

Estonian identity verification startup Veriff has just raised a $100m Series C, making it the Baltic country’s sixth unicorn.

The round was co-led by Tiger Global and Alkeon, with participation from existing investors IVP and Accel. The round values the company at $1.5bn.

Despite having a population of just 1.3m, Estonia has given birth to five other unicorns — Skype, Wise (or TransferWise, as it used to be called), Pipedrive, Bolt and Playtech. Only Bolt has not yet publicly listed, been acquired or moved its headquarters abroad. In many cases, alumni of those earlier successes have become drivers of the ecosystem, founding new companies or becoming angel investors in the ambitious ideas of others.

Veriff says that the company will use the fresh funding for R&D and hiring. The company currently has 360 employees from 46 nationalities.

CEO and founder Kaarel Kotkas said he would be spending more time in the US going forward: “Me being in the US lets me build up the team there, [while] keeping the same culture and being there personally for our bigger customers.

“The biggest challenge will be to keep on scaling at the same speed without losing the great culture of delivering fast, and not being a big enough company to allow ourselves to get slow.”

Anisah Osman Britton is coauthor of Sifted’s Startup Life newsletter, which comes out weekly on Wednesdays. Sign up here.