Rick Song's Persona Raises $200 Mil to Protect Identities from AI Bots
By Tom Kagy | 30 Apr, 2025

In an internet increasingly overrun by both good and bad AI agents, Persona aims to provide an identity verification solution to protect both sellers and buyers.

Persona grew its total funding to $417 million and its implied valuation to $2 billion with a $200 million Series D funding led by Ribbit Capital and Founders Fund.  This round, announced April 30, includes participation by existing investors Coatue, Index Ventures, First Round Capital and Bond. 

The success enjoyed by Persona co-founder and CEO Rick Song, 34, in turning his 2018 startup into a prospective Unicorn is in large part attributable to his vision of building an identity verification platform for not only vendors of goods and services but also the consumers themselves.

“Today you're disclosing more and more about yourself," he recently told Forbes.  "You're just giving up so much information.  Our dream is this idea of a self-sovereign, personally-owned portable identity.”

To date Persona’s success has been driven by the vendor side of the identity verification space who pumped $100 million into Persona's 2024 revenues.  Companies are struggling to differentiate between the legions of bad AI bots looking to steal and defraud while also accommodating the explosion of AI-powered agents unleashed by sophisticated users to run their online errands or promote legitimate business objectives.

In 2024 good bots made up 14% of automated traffic and bad bots 37%, according to a study by the cybersecurity firm Imperva.  Those bad bots cost American businesses $18-31 billion  a year.  The bad bots don't just steal money; their activity, even when mostly unsuccessful, costs companies even more in server costs, between $68-116 billion. 

“Maybe this constant distinguishing of ‘is this a bot or not,’ is kind of a pointless distinction that may not make sense anymore,” Song told Forbes. “The real question is just who's behind the AI and what’s their intent.”

Persona uses a system of customized “flows” tailored to each of its 3,000 client vendors, including household names like OpenAI, LinkedIn, DoorDash and Robinhood, and to each consumer visiting the site.  Verifying a consumer's identity to Persona's satisfaction may be quite involved in certain high-risk situations, including requiring an upload of a selfie, a photo of their government ID, a video capturing various angles and facial expressions, or even a scan of a passport NFC chip. 

Before launching Persona with roommate and CTO Charles Yeh Song had worked for five years as an engineer at Square, a pioneer in the point-of-sale space.  During that time Song had an epiphany — some vendors might require customizable software to meet their verification needs.  Persona was conceived to answer that need.

Song's ultimate goal is to build tamper-proof identity profiles for each online consumer to allow Persona to instantly verify them as human.