Valimail raises $25M in additional funding for its email authentication service

Valimail helps businesses ensure that nobody can impersonate them over email. That’s not a sexy business to be in, but very much a necessary one. The company’s email authentication service, which uses standards like SPF, DKIM and DMARC, is currently in use by the likes of Yelp, Uber, Fanni Mae and WeWork. Today, the company announced that it has raised a $25 million Series B round led by Tenaya Capital, with participation from Shasta Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners and Bloomberg Beta.

This round brings Valimail’s total amount of funding to $38.5 million, including the company’s $12 million Series A round in 2016.

“Authentication is at the root of trusted communications,” Valimail CEO and co-founder Alexander Garcia-Tobar told me. “You must be able to trust the authenticity of who/what is on the other side, or the communication is meaningless. For example, no retailer would never accept a credit card without swiping it first (either physically or virtually). What happens in the credit card world needs to happen for communications.”

The funding round is coming at an important time for email authentication. The DMARC standard is now supported by over 5 billion inboxes, according to Valimail. Over the course oft he last six month, domain owners have also published more DMARC records than in the five previous years combined. In addition, all federal agencies must implement this standard, too.

Valimail promises to take care of all the hassles of setting up support for these authentication standards.

“After attempting email authentication with other solutions, I was amazed at the level of automation Valimail provides,” said JJ Agha, VP of information security at WeWork. “It eliminates the need for two FTEs, so my staff can focus on other key priorities. I consider it a ‘set it and forget it’ solution for ensuring that our employees and executives can’t be impersonated and that our email is trusted.”