Tiger Global Invests in Unit21: No-Code Fraud Prevention

Unit21 Secures $34 Million in Series B Funding

Unit21, a company specializing in no-code software for fraud monitoring, has announced the successful completion of a $34 million Series B funding round. This investment was spearheaded by Tiger Global Management.

Valuation and Previous Funding

The funding round establishes a valuation of $300 million for the San Francisco-based Unit21. This achievement occurs just nine months following a $13 million Series A raise.

Previous investors in the Series A round included the founders of Plaid, Chime, and Shape Security, as well as Michael Vaughan, former Venmo COO.

Investors in the Latest Round

ICONIQ Capital and existing investors – Gradient Ventures (Google’s AI venture fund), A.Capital, and South Park Commons – also participated in this latest funding event.

Founding and Core Mission

Founded in 2018 by Trisha Kothari and Clarence Chio, Unit21 was created to empower risk, compliance, and fraud teams. The company aims to combat financial crime through a secure, integrated, and no-code platform.

The founders identified shortcomings in traditional “black box” machine learning approaches to fraud prevention. They envisioned a system offering greater operational control to risk and compliance teams.

Core Technology and Capabilities

Unit21’s primary technology is a “flag-and-review” toolset. This is designed to enable non-technical personnel and anti-money laundering (AML) teams to construct intricate statistical models.

These teams can deploy customized workflows without requiring engineering support. The platform facilitates mitigation of fraud and money laundering risks through Know Your Customer (KYC) verification, transaction monitoring, and suspicious activity report (SAR) case management.

Impressive Customer Growth

Unit21 has rapidly expanded its client base, now serving over 50 enterprise customers. These include prominent companies such as Chime, Intuit, Coinbase, Gusto, Flywire, Wyre, and Twitter.

Since its inception in 2018, the company has monitored over $100 billion in transactions via its API and dashboard. It reports having protected over 20 million users from over $100 million in potential fraud losses.

While specific revenue figures were not disclosed, the company stated a 12x revenue growth in 2020 compared to 2019.

Future Plans and Expansion

“Data is the most important weapon in the fight against fraud and money laundering,” stated Kothari. “This funding will support our mission to democratize data and make it more accessible to operations teams.”

The new capital will be allocated to expanding the engineering, research and development, and go-to-market teams. Unit21 has grown from 12 to 53 employees in the past year.

The company intends to broaden the platform’s application beyond financial crimes, targeting generalized flag and review use cases. Expansion into the Asia-Pacific (APAC) and Europe/Middle East (EMEA) markets is also planned.

Industry Perspective

John Curtius, a Partner at Tiger Global, commented that Unit21 is fundamentally changing how organizations leverage data for risk management and compliance.

Competitive Landscape and Regulatory Fines

The fraud prevention sector is experiencing significant investment, with companies like Sift, Seon, and Feedzai also securing funding.

Financial institutions faced approximately $10.4 billion in global fines and penalties in 2020 related to anti-money laundering (AML), know your customer (KYC), data privacy, and MiFID regulations. This brings the total since 2008 to $46.4 billion.

A report indicated a 141% increase in fines since 2019, with 198 fines levied against financial institutions for deficiencies in AML, KYC, data privacy, and MiFID compliance.