Anonos raises $50 million to fuel customer success and expand global partnership
Anonos has raised $50 million in growth financing backed by its intellectual property (IP) portfolio, facilitated by Aon and led by GT Investment Partners (“Ghost Tree Partners”).
The company will use the growth funding to scale customer success and expand partnerships, sales and marketing for its Data Embassy software platform, which powers secure data processing in untrusted environments with accuracy and speed for faster insights to achieve enterprise goals.
This additional growth capital brings Anonos’ total funding to $70 million, including $20 million in prior funding led by Edison Partners.
Data Embassy combines patented statutory pseudonymization, synthetic data and other privacy-enhancing computation techniques that make it easy for organizations to control the level of identifiable data that they process.
Streamlined approvals and workflows mean more data can be approved faster for more use cases with lower risk – all while ensuring compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Schrems II and other global data privacy and security requirements.
“Data-driven enterprises haven’t been able to use their data assets to their fullest advantage because of privacy and security restrictions,” explained Gary LaFever, co-CEO and general counsel of Anonos.
“Other vendors have attempted to resolve this issue, but we believe Anonos’ 10 years of R&D on Data Embassy is game-changing for organizations that depend on accessible yet compliant and uninterrupted data supply chains. The technology’s 26 granted international patents and more than 70 additional patent assets serve as the backbone of this financing that takes us to a new level of business execution.”, LaFever added.
“Data Embassy is the only technology that eliminates the tradeoff between data protection and data utility,” added Ted Myerson, co-CEO and president of Anonos.
“The significant value of our IP and its ability to solve such critical global data issues allowed us to work with Aon and Ghost Tree to secure growth financing. With the new funding, Anonos will increase awareness of our unique position within the market and highlight our capabilities to ensure the success of our growing customer base by accelerating their speed to insight.”, Myerson continued.
LaFever and Myerson have been business partners for more than 21 years. Their prior company, FTEN, was the fastest-growing software company on the Inc. 500 for two years in a row and was acquired by NASDAQ OMX in 2010 for integration into its 100+ global exchanges.
The principles behind that technology, which re-linked data for risk management in securities trading, paved the way for development of Data Embassy and its ability to de-link data from both direct and indirect identifiers to obscure identity while enabling organizations to use more of their data for compliant analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, data sharing and data transfer.
Recognized as a Gartner Cool Vendor and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Innovators Community, Anonos makes data that otherwise would be restricted accessible to expand and expedite strategic initiatives, so organizations can create more value and still be compliant with data privacy and security regulations.
Data Embassy creates Variant Twins: source data that has been transformed into new, statutorily pseudonymized and 100% accurate data assets authorized for specific use cases. Because Variant Twins are embedded with multi-level data privacy and security controls that are technologically enforced, they can travel anywhere.
Controlled relinking to the original data accelerates speed to insights for innovation, competitive differentiation and operational efficiency among other benefits, but that process can only occur with the addition of other data held separately by the data controller or an authorized party.
“Innovation is the key to a growth economy, but intangible assets are the foundation. That is why we are bringing unique solutions to the market to help IP-rich companies like Anonos leverage the value of their intellectual property,” said Lewis Lee, CEO of Aon’s Intellectual Property Solutions.
“We are excited to help companies of all sizes and industries unlock the value of these assets so they can further pursue their growth ambitions with options that can help prevent diluting their ownership.”, Lee continued.
“Anonos’ leadership team has a successful track record of making regulatory compliance a competitive advantage for its customers and anticipating needs at the intersection of law and technology to transform how industries approach data,” said Mark Fox, Managing Partner at Ghost Tree Partners.
“We are excited to support their next phase of growth for wider adoption of statutory pseudonymization and other privacy-preserving technologies to maximize data value while ensuring compliant use.”, Fox concluded.