- Companies
- Sift
Last Sift valuation
$1B
Series E · Apr 2021
Last Sift funding round
$50M
Series E · Apr 2021
Cumulative funding Sift raised
$155M
across 5 funding rounds
Key investors in Sift
Union Square Ventures
Insight Partners
Spark Capital
Stripes
First Round Capital
Max Levchin
About Sift
Sift provides digital trust and safety solutions preventing fraud for e-commerce and fintech platforms using machine learning on global transaction data. It protects sites handling billions in payments annually from account takeovers and payment fraud. San Francisco-headquartered since 2011, Sift serves DoorDash, Instacart, and Poshmark across 200 countries with real-time decisioning APIs.
Founded
2011
HQ
Website
Status
Privately held
Customer focus
B2B
Revenue model
Subscription
Valuation
$1B (Apr 2021)
Sift Valuation
Sift is currently valued at $1B, based on its Series E in April 2021.
The $50M round was led by Insight Partners, with participation from Union Square Ventures and Stripes.
Sift valuation by funding round
| Date | Stage | Valuation |
|---|---|---|
| Apr 2021 | Series E | $1B |
Sift Funding History
Sift has raised a total of $155M across 5 funding rounds.
Sift's first fundraising round was a $4M Series A in March 2013. The most recent completed round was a $50M Series E in April 2021.
Sift funding rounds
| Date | Stage | Investors | Raised | Valuation | Deal Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 2021 | Series E | Insight Partners (lead); Union Square Ventures; Stripes | $50M | $1B | Sift, a digital trust and safety platform founded in 2011 out of Y Combinator, provides fraud prevention technology to detect and block payment fraud, account hijacking, and abuse using machine learning and a global network. The company announced a $50 million Series E funding round on April 22, 2021, led by Insight Partners with participation from Union Square Ventures and Stripes, valuing Sift at over $1 billion and achieving unicorn status. This brought total funding raised to approximately $158 million. The capital is intended to expand the product portfolio, scale product, engineering, and sales teams globally, and support acquisitions. Sift reported processing more than $250 billion in transactions in 2020, serving major customers including Twitter, Airbnb, and Twilio. Business tripled since CEO Marc Olesen joined in June 2018, with strong traction attributed to its network effects and advanced ML technology amid rising online fraud during the COVID-19 pandemic. The funding reflects investor confidence in Sift's leadership in combating the evolving 'Fraud Economy,' where fraud tactics have become interconnected and sophisticated. Insight Partners, a Sift board member since 2016, highlighted the company's impressive growth, fundamentals, and massive opportunity as more businesses shift online. Sift also appointed Eu-Gene Sung as CFO to support scaling. The round positions Sift as the 11th cybersecurity unicorn in 2021, emphasizing its role in enabling revenue growth by reducing fraud friction for legitimate transactions. |
| Mar 2018 | Series D | Stripes (lead); Spark Capital; Union Square Ventures; Insight Partners | $53M | - | Sift (formerly Sift Science) is a San Francisco-based provider of fraud prevention and risk management solutions using real-time machine learning. On 2018-03-21, it secured $53 million in Series D funding led by Stripes Group (listed as Stripes), with participation from prior investors including Insight Partners, Spark Capital, and Union Square Ventures, bringing total funding to $107 million at that time. Later rounds include a Series E raising $50 million at over $1 billion valuation led by Insight Partners with Union Square Ventures and Stripes, but this occurred after 2018. Current estimates place Sift's valuation at $1 billion and total funding at $156.5 million. As of 2023, it monitored $350 billion in GMV annually across 34K+ sites (GMV, not revenue). Customers include DoorDash, McDonald’s, Twitter, and others. |
| Jul 2016 | Series C | Insight Partners (lead); Spark Capital; Union Square Ventures | $30M | - | Sift Science (now Sift) raised $30 million in a funding round on July 19, 2016, led by Insight Partners, with participation from Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures. The San Francisco-based company provides machine learning-powered fraud prevention for websites and apps, moving beyond rules-based systems to detect normal versus aberrant online behavior correlated with criminal activity. At the time, Sift protected over 6,000 sites including Airbnb, Yelp, Indeed, Zillow, Match.com, Twilio, OpenTable, and Wayfair, primarily in retail and e-commerce to avoid chargebacks, with new products launched for community and content-focused platforms. The funds were earmarked for expansion beyond e-commerce, hiring about 30 more employees to reach around 90 staff, and product development, with all products SOC 2 Type II certified. Sift competed with large security firms like RSA and IBM, as well as machine learning fraud startups such as Riskified, Signifyd, and Forter. |
| May 2014 | Series B | Spark Capital (lead); First Round Capital; Max Levchin; Union Square Ventures | $18M | - | Sift Science raised $18 million in a Series B funding round on May 14, 2014, led by Spark Capital with participation from Union Square Ventures, Max Levchin, and First Round Capital. This brought the company's total funding to $23.5 million at that time. Spark Capital general partner Mo Koyfman joined the board alongside the investment. Sift Science provides machine learning-based fraud prevention for online merchants, analyzing transactions in real time without relying on predefined rules. The platform leverages a global network of data to detect fraudulent activity accurately. Sift charges no fee for the first 10,000 transactions per month per client and approximately one cent per transaction thereafter, with no annual contracts required. |
| Mar 2013 | Series A | Union Square Ventures (lead) | $4M | - | Sift is a fraud prevention platform using machine learning for digital trust and safety. Union Square Ventures participated in Sift's Series A in 2013, as well as later rounds including Series B in 2014, Series C in 2016, Series D in 2018, and Series E in 2021. Sift has raised a total of $156.52 million over 8 funding rounds. |
Who has invested in Sift?
6 investors have backed Sift across its funding rounds, including Union Square Ventures, Insight Partners, Spark Capital, Stripes, First Round Capital and Max Levchin.
Lead investors include Insight Partners, Stripes, Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures.
Sift Investors
| Investor | HQ | Rounds | Role | First check |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | Lead | Mar 2013 | ||
| 3 | Lead | May 2014 | ||
| 3 | Lead | Jul 2016 | ||
| 2 | Lead | Mar 2018 | ||
This data is available for Pro users. Sign up to see all 6 Sift investors. Start Free Trial | ||||
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Start Free TrialAcquisitions by Sift
Sift has acquired 1 company to date.
Last acquisition by Sift was on May 25th 2021. Sift acquired Chargeback for $65M.
Latest Acquisitions by Sift
| Description | Chargeback is a Salt Lake City-headquartered SaaS platform for merchant chargeback management. It monitors transactions from processors like Stripe and Adyen, automates dispute responses with evidence compilation, and delivers alerts for high-risk patterns to maintain compliance with Visa and Mastercard rules. Serving e-commerce brands in apparel and electronics, the platform recovers over 70 percent of disputes on average. Founded in 2011, Chargeback integrates with Shopify and BigCommerce for seamless fraud prevention. |
| HQ Country | |
| HQ City | Salt Lake City, UT |
| Deal Date | 25 May 2021 |
| Valuation | $65M |
| EV/Revenue | |
| EV/EBITDA | |
This data is available for Pro users. Sign up to see all Sift acquisitions and their M&A valuation multiples. Start Free Trial | |
Sift Competitors
Sift competitors include listed companies like Mitek Systems and NSFOCUS, and private ones like BigID, Tines, Iru and Sardine.
| Company | HQ | Status | Revenue | EBITDA | Valuation | Revenue Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Private | $100M | - | $1B | 10.0x | ||
| Private | - | - | $1.1B | - | ||
| Private | - | - | $850M | - | ||
| Publicly listed | $180M | $37M | $781M | 3.7x | ||
| Private | - | - | $660M | - | ||
| Publicly listed | $379M | $37M | $955M | 2.4x |
Sift Public Comps
Sift is still privately-owned, but its public comps include NSFOCUS, BeiJing Certificate, Yubico, Rapid7, Riskified, Asiainfo Security, Mitek Systems, Eastcompeace Tech, Red Violet and CANCOM.
| Last FY | EV/Revenue | EV/EBITDA | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | EBITDA | Last FY | LTM | 2027E | Last FY | LTM | 2027E | |
| $379M | $37M | 2.6x | 2.4x | 26.1x | 25.6x | |||
| $125M | ($12M) | 6.7x | - | (70.9x) | - | |||
| $226M | $19M | 3.3x | 3.2x | 39.7x | 25.6x | |||
| $860M | $63M | 1.3x | 1.3x | 17.4x | 6.8x | |||
| $345M | ($31M) | 1.8x | 1.6x | (20.3x) | 19.0x | |||
| $1.2B | ($11M) | 1.2x | 1.1x | (126.2x) | 339.7x | |||
| $180M | $37M | 4.1x | 3.7x | 19.9x | 11.2x | |||
| $197M | $26M | 4.8x | - | 36.4x | - | |||
This data is available for Pro users. Sign up to see all Sift competitors and their valuation data. Start Free Trial | ||||||||
Common questions about Sift
| When was Sift founded? | Sift was founded in 2011. |
| Where is Sift headquartered? | Sift is headquartered in San Francisco, CA, United States. |
| Is Sift publicly listed? | No, Sift is a private, VC-backed company. |
| What is Sift's valuation? | Sift was last valued at $1B in its Series E in April 2021. |
| How much funding has Sift raised? | Sift has raised $155M across 5 funding rounds. |
| What was Sift's last funding round? | Sift's last funding round was a $50M Series E in April 2021, led by Insight Partners. |
| Who are Sift's investors? | Sift's investors include Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital, Insight Partners, Stripes, First Round Capital and Max Levchin. |
| Which companies are comparable to Sift? | Companies comparable to Sift include BigID, Tines, Iru, Mitek Systems, Sardine and NSFOCUS. |
| How many companies has Sift acquired? | Sift has acquired 1 company, including Chargeback. |
| What was the largest acquisition by Sift? | The $65M acquisition of Chargeback in May 2021 is the largest acquisition Sift has made to date. |
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