Targeting early 2019 IPO, ForgeRock takes in $88M from investors
Consumers interact with companies via a growing number of mediums, from mobile devices and the web to point-of-sale systems. As a result, it’s not uncommon for large organizations to be managing upwards of millions of user accounts.
San Francisco-based ForgeRock Inc. has spent the past seven years working to ease the task. Today, the company announced that it’s expanding the effort with the help of a newly closed $88 million funding round.
The capital will go toward widening the adoption of ForgeRock’s identity platform, which enables companies to manage user activity and the associated information in one place. At its core is a set of controls for regulating how users interact with services. Administrators can add social sign-in options to an application, restrict access based on account type and enforce other security rules according to the risk profile of each log-in attempt.
On the front end, ForgeRock can make it easier for companies to implement self-service management features. The platform provides the ability to give users control over how their activity data is used.
ForgeRock’s software has found a wide audience. It’s employed by big brands such Geico Co., Toyota Motor Corp. and Thomson Reuters Corp. as well as numerous government agencies worldwide. ForgeRock will use today’s funding to continue growing globally.
Chief Executive Mike Ellis said in an interview with Fortune that he is particularly keen on establishing a stronger Asia-Pacific presence. To that end, the company will invest today’s funding in expanding customer acquisition and engineering efforts. The push is expected to see its total headcount pass the 500 mark by the end of the year.
In the longer term, Ellis said that ForgeRock is looking to hit the stock exchange via an initial public offering planned for early 2019. That could very well mean today’s funding round will be its last as a private company.
Venture capital giant Accel led the round, while new investor KKR and several returning backers contributed as well. The investment brings ForgeRock’s total raised to over $140 million.
That gives the company a bigger war chest than most of the other pure-play players in the identity management market. One of the exceptions is Okta Inc., which raised $187 million in an April IPO following several large funding rounds. More recently, it released a major product update designed to give organizations greater control over how users interact with their systems.
Image: ForgeRock
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