CNBC Disruptor 50

23. Socure

Founder: Johnny Ayers (CEO)
Launched: 2012
Headquarters: Incline Village, Nevada
Funding:
$343 million
Valuation: $4.5 billion
Key Technologies:
Artificial intelligence, cloud computing, deep neural networks/deep learning, explainable AI, generative AI, machine learning, software-defined security, low code/no code software
Industry:
Enterprise technology, cybersecurity
Previous appearances on Disruptor 50 list:
0

Igor Gnedo, Antonina Lepore & Adrianne Paerels

As AI-driven fraud explodes, identity verification is increasingly important to companies whose business relies on knowing whether they can safely say yes to a new client, including banks, fintechs and credit card companies. Losses from fraud in the United States totaled $15.9 billion in 2025, according to the FTC, with private researchers' estimates much higher.

Socure, a Nevada-based company founded in 2012, verifies identity and offers information about risk characteristics in real time, validated across several dimensions of modern life. That makes it a powerful player in a pivotal sector to keep consumer finance working online. 

Socure combines data aggregation from sources such as credit bureaus and utilities; pattern recognition of frauds from across its customer base, so it can eliminate bad actors; and an "entity profile" that binds users' digital footprints, such as IP address and behavioral patterns, to their identities. It also offers its enterprise customers the ability to tailor their identity verification systems across regulatory regimes, and helps enterprises approve "thin-credit" customers — in many cases, Gen Zers with little financial history.

Identification verification companies have drawn scrutiny from civil society organizations that worry they are a repository of people's private information, which could in turn be leveraged by bad actors or authoritarian regimes.

But that's not stopping customers from piling on, including government agencies. Socure says it now has 3,000-plus customers, including 18 of the top 20 U.S. banks, 13 of the top 15 credit card issuers, and more than 150 public organizations, including federal agencies.

Socure had a slow start. The company ran out of money four separate times before it found its market among enterprise finance companies, founder Johnny Ayers has said. But the market exploded in the wake of AI. "We are seeing fraud rampant across every use case, every industry," Ayers said in a recent interview at the New York Stock Exchange.

Socure says it is profitable, with investors including Accel, T. Rowe Price, Scale, and Commerce Ventures.

The company has recently expanded global operations, operating in 190 countries around the world. Its next mission: figuring out how to empower agentic AI to verify identities so that companies can say yes to more customers, faster.

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