AI-driven background check startup Intelligo raises $22M

Intelligo, an Israeli startup providing AI-driven background check solutions to investors, financial institutions, and corporations, today announced it has raised $22 million from Felicitas Global Partners, one of its long-standing clients. The company said that the growth round, which takes its total fund-raise to $44 million, will drive the development of its AI-powered risk intelligence platform — Clarity — and help set up shop in additional geographies.

For years, due diligence processes such as background verification have been manual and time-consuming (typically taking 10-15 days). Agencies providing these services often struggle with delays and backlogs, leaving end-users — people requiring the due diligence — little option but to provide temporary clearances. In some cases, analysts can also miss out on important sources of information such as news reports.

Automated background checks

Founded in 2014 by Shlomo Mirvis and Dana Rakovsky, Intelligo tackles this problem through automation, claiming to bring speed and accuracy into the whole process. The company’s Clarity intelligence system employs multiple layers of AI and automation to comb through more than 400,000 public data sources and gather all relevant information (legal, professional, regulatory, financial, online media) required to make a decision on a particular individual or company.

Then, a team of in-house experts reviews this information to create the final report for the customer.

“Each client has an account where they can log in and run a report at any time from any place, share and collaborate with other team members, and manage the account in a very simple way,” Mirvis, who is also the CEO of the company, told VentureBeat. The dashboard gives a 360-degree view of the gathered data, with full information of the sources and links to original documents, allowing customers to vet potential red flags in the risk profile.

Currently, the platform returns reports between 30 minutes and five days, and it is used by hundreds of customers, primarily investment banks, private equity firms, and hedge funds with a combined assets under management of over $500 billion. Plus, even after producing the report, Clarity can continue to monitor the target and provide alerts as and when something changes in its background profile.

“We use our AI algorithms to weed out irrelevant data and deduplicate data to keep only the most relevant data in the report and help individuals arrive at the right conclusions. Our AI also uses advanced natural language processing analysis to identify adverse news articles written about our subjects,” Mirvis said.

Competitive space

Intelligo is not the only one solving the problem of legacy background checks with technology. Over the past few years, a number of players have come up in the same space, including Checkr, HireRight, Kroll, K2 Integrity, Paycom, and Exiger.

“There are a number of companies in the background check and human resources technology space targeting different ends of the market. Most are focused on general checks for hiring at all levels — from minimum wage positions on up. Intelligo, however, is focused on the high end of the market for both pre-hire and pre-investment decision making by firms, as part of their risk intelligence,” Mirvis added.

Targeting accuracy and revenue growth

Moving forward, the company aims to double its headcount and expand the capabilities of its risk intelligence platform to draw more customers.

While the CEO didn’t share how exactly the company plans to improve the platform, he did note that Intelligo continues to take recommendations from clients and improve the accuracy of the solution. Part of the effort is likely to be driven toward covering an even broader base of data sources, as background check reports are only as good as the data they are based on. The company has seen 200% revenue growth over the past three years and expects to clock 300% growth in the current year.

“The last 18 months have been very positive for Intelligo as remote and hybrid work structures have made due diligence processes and recruiting even more essential. A lack of face-to-face interaction takes away the ability to make intuitive, personal connections, so organizations are even more reliant on getting accurate and thorough intelligence that provides a 360-degree view of who candidates really are,” Mirvis said.

Globally, the overall market for due diligence, pre-investment and pre-hiring, is estimated to be valued at $17 billion.