2H2019 Identity Management Funding Analysis

on December 17, 2019

Back in July, I wrote an article taking a brief look at venture capitalist funding patterns within the identity and access management space, for the first half of 2019. I am going to revisit that topic, but for the second half of the year.

Key Facts July to December 2017 / 2018 / 2019

Funding increased 309% year on year for the second half of 2019, compared to the same period in 2018. Taking a 3 year look, it seems, that perhaps 2018, and not 2019, was the unusual year.

The number of organisations receiving funding, has reduced every year since 2017. The drop between 2018 and 2019 was about 15%. Between 2017 and 2018, a 34% decline. As per first half numbers, you could infer, that the identity industry in general is maturing, stabilising and seeing the number of organisations needing funding start to slow. Approximately 30% of the funding in the second half of 2019, was classified as seed, which may support that claim.

2H2019

~$532 million overall funding
Seed funding accounted for 30.3%
Median announcement date Sep 26th
33 companies funded

2H2018

~$172 million overall funding
Seed funding accounted for 23.1%
Median announcement date Aug 29th
39 companies funded

2H2017

~$523 million overall funding
Seed funding accounted for 32.8%
Median announcement date Oct 3rd
61 companies funded

2H2019 Company Analysis

A coarse grained analysis of the 2019 numbers, shows a pretty balanced geographic spread – between EMEA and North America at least. Whilst, most funding originates within the US, the companies receiving funding seems quite balanced. For the first half of 2019, a much larger focus was on organisations based out of North America however.