k-ID, a startup headquartered in Singapore and Seattle that’s building tools for online youth safety, announced Tuesday that it raised a $45 million Series A funding round.
Billed as a “global compliance engine,” the k-ID suite is designed to help game developers comply with age-related regulations. It also lets parents customize their children’s online experience, both on the internet and in participating networks like online gaming.
k-ID aims to address a developing issue in international media markets. In several countries, such as the U.K. and Australia, government regulators have started methods of “age assurance,” in attempts to keep children and teenagers away from inappropriate material.
“The types of international regulation that our technology touches is largely focused on age-appropriate experience and features,” said Aakash Mandhar, k-ID’s Seattle-based CTO.
Mandhar continued: “As an example, in Belgium loot boxes in games are prohibited … while in Australia, there are rules about how the loot box is displayed, i.e. to avoid slots or gambling-like animations. That’s where k-ID can take the complexity out for the game developer: our technology sends the signals to adjust the game to reflect those rules.”
The k-ID process is intended to be transparent, so users know it’s happening, and the data generated in the process isn’t distributed across the entire platform. It’s also intended to be restricted to specific markets where age assurance is legally required for online services.
k-ID is designed to be integrated into any game or online platform. The first game developer to publicly announce k-ID integration is Another Axiom, the studio behind the popular VR monkey simulator Gorilla Tag.
Parents, meanwhile, can use k-ID to automatically adjust what children can and cannot interact with online, such as private text chats, paid loot boxes, target advertising, or location sharing. The long-term goal is to replace current age-gating systems with a flexible k-ID account that can travel with a child as they grow and explore online.
Mandhar previously worked at Hewlett Packard, Yahoo, and Immutable. He originally came to Seattle via Microsoft, which led to a position at Xbox subsidiary 343 Industries.
After Halo 5: Guardians shipped, Mandhar went to Electronic Arts. While there, he was one of the architects of the virtual economy that underpins the hit battle royale game Apex Legends, as well as many of EA’s other games. After leaving Immutable in 2023, Mandhar’s work with startups eventually led him to k-ID.
Mandhar is one of two Seattle-based k-ID employees, with plans to hire more in the near future. The rest of the company’s 40-person team is headquartered in Singapore. This includes its co-founders Kieran Donovan, Timothy Ma, Jeff Wu, and Julian Corbett.
The $45 million funding round comes from Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Venture Partners, along with Konvoy, TIRTA, Okta, and Z Venture Capital. This comes after a $5.4 million round from last year, bringing the total money raised by k-ID to $51 million.
https://ift.tt/9lF5LXg June 25, 2024 at 01:00PM GeekWire
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