Authlete secures partnership and US$3m pre-series A investment from Toppan, NTT Docomo Ventures and MTI

Authlete Co., Ltd is pleased to announce, we have closed our Pre-Series A raising US$3million investment from Toppan Printing Co., Ltd, NTT DOCOMO Ventures, Inc. and MTI Ltd. The capital raised will be used to accelerate Authlete’s solution to be pushed worldwide through Sales and Marketing drive.

Authlete provides OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect implementation solutions through cloud and on-premises software service integral to API (Application Programming Interface) Security. APIs reduce friction in communication and interaction between programs and help to integrate systems. Financial Institutes, Healthcare, IoT have been using APIs to provide value to customers and businesses.

Authlete is unique as the platform stores tokens “off-site”, reducing vulnerability of the main apps/servers/databases. Also authentication and authorization is separated, meaning authorization credentials can be anonymized and are very loosely tied to identity, reducing the impact of breaches and leaks.

The “API Economy” a term describing how organisations are using Web APIs to share data to drive profitability to their business is growing rapidly The Global API Management Market size is estimated to grow from US$606.8m to US$2665.0m by 2021 according to a report published by marketsandmarkets.com. Robust security measures to protect Web APIs from hacking are of critical importance.

Authlete is highly rated by the developer communities and enterprise customers and to date have been taken up by financial institutes and healthcare providers. Authlete have collaborated with NRI Secure Technologies through Uni-ID Libra, Nihon Unisys through Resonatex[3] and Toppan Printing through SpeedEntry.

Authlete was incorporated in 2015, based at Finolab, a FinTech Incubation space in Tokyo. Last year, Authlete won FIBC2017 the biggest FinTech competition in Japan and were accepted into Level39, Europe’s largest tech community for FinTech, Cybersecurity and Smart cities in London. Recently Authlete became founding members of Cyber39, designed to accelerate UK’s ambition to become the most secure place in the World to do business.

Mr. Takahiko Kawasaki, the Co-Founder and Representative Director of Authlete, said of the investment “I’m very happy our team and technology has received so much trust from our partners Toppan, MTI and NTT DOCOMO Ventures. We look forward to building our relationship, current and new, to ensure the public and partners benefit from the API economy”.

Authlete’s Investor Commented:

• Mr. Motohiro Hasegawa, Senior General Manager of BPO Solution Center at Toppan Printing “We have been working on My Number Card business, Information Management Support for our clients, services linked with personal information and we were starting to look at new services based on authorization technology. We came across Authlete, we saw they had very high technical capabilities and realised the potential. With Authlete’s global reach and focus on authorization, at Toppan we believe we will be able to create new businesses with Authlete, taking advantage of each other's strengths. By introducing Authlete to our existing service we will make them more safe and also convenient, we look forward to working on new services through our joint partnership”.
• Mr. Takayuki Inagawa, Executive Vice President at NTT DOCOMO Ventures, “For NTT DOCOMO to achieve our mid term “Declaration beyond” strategic plan, the investment into Authlete was simple and clear, Authlete’s technology lowers the security risk and barrier for creating and using API’s. In the near future our 5G communication network will be used for our Next Generation Technology through AI and Robotics. We believe Authlete’s technology is indispensable for our customers and partner companies to receive services beyond their imagination”.
• Mr Hiroshi Izumi, Executive Vice President at MTI “At MTI, we have been using Authlete as a key infrastructure service since 2016 for our healthcare services LUNA LUNA and CARADA. We will be expanding the use of Authlete for other services at MTI. At MTI we are putting strength into FinTech. With Authlete’s trust in the financial sector, Authlete will enable us to offer new and secure FinTech services. We position Authlete as an important strategic partner company”.