A BELFAST company behind pioneering heartbeat authentication technology has secured £4 million worth of investment.
ECG biometrics innovator, B-Secur has just completed its second round of investment after raising £3.5m in 2017.
The latest multi-million pound funding has come from a syndicate of some of the UK and Ireland’s leading investors, including Accelerated Digital Ventures (ADV) and Kernel Capital, manager of the Bank of Ireland Kernel Capital Growth Funds, both of which supported B-Secur's previous funding round.
B-Secur CEO, Alan Foreman welcomed the latest investment, which will help fuel international growth.
“Securing further investment at this critical stage recognises our rapid development over the past 18 months and the market relevance of B-Secur’s technology. Most importantly, it’s a strong indicator of B-Secur’s growth potential on a global scale," he said.
The news comes just weeks after the Belfast company unveiled its 'Heartkey' brand at the world’s biggest consumer technology event, Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.
Heartkey combines unique user identification with advanced physiological monitoring for health and wellness purposes, including medical grade heart rate, stress and fatigue monitoring, which can be applied to everyday situations such as driving a car, or for real-time health monitoring in the home.
B-Secur is now partnering with some of the world’s top motoring manufacturers, global wearable and fitness tracker technology firms to embed Heartkey into multiple everyday technologies and wearables.
“CES has been the world's gathering place for innovators and breakthrough technology for 50 years, so we were thrilled to be part of it and to showcase ground-breaking technology which has been developed by some incredibly talented people in Northern Ireland. It was especially exciting to be singled out by major league technology press including Wired and CNET, and we even appeared in Mashable’s Top Picks of the Show," Mr Foreman continued.
"We’re at a really exciting stage for the business, we have forged very significant links with big name partners who recognise our technology’s value and importance to their own product development and this investment will allow us to continue driving our ambitions for B-Secur forward."
Jayne Brady, partner at Kernel Capital added:
“Since our first investment with B-Secur we have been impressed by the drive and determination of the management team and their highly skilled technical experts who have worked hard to elevate this technology and to pair it with partners and applications which we firmly believe will change how we live and work. They are at an exciting stage and we are very proud to support them in taking their vision forward on a global scale.”
B-Secur employs more than 35 staff at its Belfast headquarters in Catalyst Inc.
