CPE News Brief (11.15.2022) – On October 31, 2022, 1Password acquired Passage Identity, Inc. Financial terms were not disclosed the time of announcement.
1Password has finally disclosed its purchase price being US $24 million in equity issuance, plus unknown, if any, amount in cash payment.
Founded by Anna Pobletts and Cole Hecht, Austin, Texas based Passage Identity enables web and mobile developers to replace passwords with biometrics for optimal security and a frictionless user experience. It goes beyond APIs and SDKs to make authentication truly easy to implement.
In January 2022, Passage Identity closed a US $4.9 million funding round led by LiveOak Venture Partners with participation from Next Coast Ventures, Tau Ventures, Secure Octane, and various angel investors.
Toronto based 1Password combines industry-leading security with award-winning design to bring private, secure, and user-friendly password management to everyone.
In December 2021, 1Password closed US $620 million Series C funding round, including US $299.5 million secondary payment to certain directors and officers of the company.
photo credit: Passage co-founders Anna Pobletts and Cole Hecht
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Passage is joining 1Password!
Cole Hecht
November 3, 2022
Today is a big day for Passage! We couldn’t be more excited to announce that Passage will be joining the 1Password team. Together, we have a huge opportunity to accelerate the adoption of passwordless sign-ins and keep people safer online.
If you’re already using Passage, you don’t need to worry—nothing is changing right away. As we begin to integrate our services into the 1Password platform, we’re committed to making the transition as seamless and easy for you as possible. We can’t wait to share more details soon.
We’re thrilled by the opportunity to join forces with such a pioneering and well-respected player in online security. Joining 1Password will allow us to dramatically speed up our pace of development, leading to better, easier-to-use products that open more doors for you.
Why 1Password?
One of the most exciting things about building software is seeing how quickly a great idea can take flight when you gather the right people around you.
In our case, solving the problem of making passwordless authentication more widely accessible is a challenge that’s gained a lot of attention recently. This shared interest is how we met the 1Password team, and it led to a series of productive discussions culminating in a hackathon week where we worked hand in hand to explore building a solution together.
Needless to say, the hackathon was a tremendous success.
We found ourselves immersed in a wonderful group of like-minded people. 1Password shares our passion for simplifying security and bringing intuitive, enjoyable experiences to an area of technology that hasn’t caught up to our expectations of convenience and quality. Security is inherently complex, but as customers of 1Password ourselves, we’ve seen how a talented team can dispel that complexity and turn the right thing to do into the easy thing to do.
Besides the obvious shared interest in authentication, it’s the 1Password team’s obsession with user experience that ultimately convinced us this was the right fit. They really understand the importance of making security user-friendly, something we’ve been preaching since day one.
In fact, it’s this vision—building a safer, simpler digital future for everyone—that drives their efforts and ours.
We’re delighted to join forces with a company that has been innovating in authentication and the password space for nearly two decades. Millions of people and over 100,000 businesses trust 1Password to store their passwords and log in securely. By bringing the talent and expertise of our two teams together, we will deliver something much greater than what’s possible on our own—a system that’s easier for companies to adopt and more appealing for users to get started with.
What’s next
Passwordless technology will change the landscape of authentication. For it to gain a foothold, we need to make it significantly easier for companies to implement a secure, passwordless authentication flow into their products.
But more than that, we need to help people transition their workflows from a password-centric world to one where authentication is more secure, more streamlined, and more convenient.
That’s where Passage and 1Password can work to accelerate adoption and help people navigate the journey from where we are today to where we know the industry is heading. Together, we can better protect people on the internet by making it simpler and more convenient for them to log in securely from any device—and we couldn’t ask for a better team to help us make that happen.
Of course, none of this would be possible without you.
Since the founding of Passage, our platform has gathered over a thousand eager developers. We’ve built a community of intrepid engineers who are already relying on Passage to modernize their sign-in flows. We’re so grateful to each and everyone one of you. You’ve trusted us to protect your users and we will continue to work hard to earn that trust as part of 1Password.
So on behalf of the entire team: thank you. We’re excited to have you by our side as our journey continues in a new home. We encourage you to sign up for the 1Password newsletter to keep up with our progress.
Onward and upward!