DataDome
New York-headquartered cybersecurity company founded by serial entrepreneurs Benjamin Fabre and Fabien Grenier. Its AI-driven bot-management platform fights automated fraud on websites, mobile apps and APIs, and has expanded into Device Check, Account Protect and Ad Protect.
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- Location
- New York, New York, United States
- Country
- United States
- Known for
- AI-powered bot management and online-fraud prevention for websites, mobile apps and APIs
- Founded
- 2015, by Benjamin Fabre and Fabien Grenier (some industry coverage says 2014 — see open items)
- Founders' background
- Their third cofounded company; previous venture TrendyBuzz, a social-media-monitoring firm, was acquired by Linkfluence in 2014
- Funding
- About $81 million total — $35M Series B (2021, Elephant) and $42M Series C (2023, InfraVia Growth), with ISAI an early backer
- Scale
- 300+ enterprise customers including Reddit, Patreon and AngelList; analyzes trillions of data points per day
- Product line
- Bot protection, Device Check (invisible CAPTCHA alternative), Account Protect (account-takeover defense), Ad Protect (ad-fraud defense)
- Team footprint
- 180 members from 30+ nationalities; offices in North America, Europe and Asia
Overview
DataDome is the cybersecurity company built by two founders who had already sold a company that watched the web — and then decided to defend it. Founded in 2015 by Benjamin Fabre and Fabien Grenier, the New York-headquartered firm sells an AI-driven platform that detects and blocks malicious bots and online fraud in real time across websites, mobile apps and APIs (SecurityWeek; VentureBeat). It has raised about $81 million in venture funding and grown from point bot-defense into a broader cyberfraud platform — adding an invisible CAPTCHA alternative, account-takeover protection and ad-fraud defense (SecurityWeek; Help Net Security).
The founders who switched sides
DataDome was the third company Fabre and Grenier founded together. Their previous venture, TrendyBuzz, was a social-media-monitoring company — software that watched and analyzed web activity at scale — which Linkfluence acquired in 2014 (VentureBeat). The founders soon realized that hackers were using similar techniques to build bad bots and attack digital commerce businesses, and that easily deployable solutions to combat those attacks barely existed (VentureBeat). DataDome was their answer: a SaaS platform whose bot-detection engine compares every request to a website against an in-memory pattern database, using stacked supervised, unsupervised and semi-supervised models to decide in under two milliseconds whether access should be granted (VentureBeat). By 2021 the engine was processing more than a trillion pieces of data a day from 25 points of presence; by 2023 the company said it analyzed 3 trillion data points daily and protected more than 300 enterprises, including Reddit, Patreon and AngelList (VentureBeat; Tech Funding News).
The timing was pandemic-driven. With e-commerce surging, 71% of companies reported an increase in successful bot attacks, e-commerce seeing the largest increase of any segment — and DataDome’s own research found a 47% increase in bot fraud attacks over six months (VentureBeat). The $35 million Series B led by Elephant in May 2021 (with ISAI participating) brought total funding to nearly $40 million; CEO Grenier reported $15 million in ARR and expected it to double within twelve months, with customers including Axel Springer, AngelList Talent, Australia Post and Foot Locker (VentureBeat).
From bot defense to fraud platform
The $42 million Series C in March 2023, led by InfraVia Growth with Elephant and ISAI participating, funded what the company called its mission “to rid the web of bot-driven cyberattacks and fraud” — and a deliberate product expansion beyond core bot protection (SecurityWeek; Tech Funding News). InfraVia partner Guillaume Santamaria framed the thesis as “bot management as a foundation for fighting online fraud,” endorsing the team’s vision of expanding from bots into fraud more broadly (Tech Funding News). DataDome said it had stopped over 250 billion online fraud attempts in real time in 2022 (Tech Funding News).
The expansion came in three products. In December 2023 DataDome announced Device Check, described as an “invisible challenge” — an alternative to CAPTCHAs that validates device-specific signals with proofs of work behind the scenes, without any visible interaction; an early-access luxury retailer saw detection accuracy improve and the false-positive rate fall to 0.001%, with fewer than 1 in 10,000 human requests challenged (SiliconANGLE). Co-founder and CEO Fabre argued that “CAPTCHAs should never be the first line of defense against bots” (SiliconANGLE). In March 2024 came Account Protect, targeting account takeovers and fake account creation at login and registration endpoints: analyzing a reported 5 trillion data points per day, it interrogates every request in under 10 milliseconds and can trigger password resets and multi-factor authentication automatically — one luxury brand discovered 75% of its 100,000–300,000 daily sign-ups were fraudulent, with a false-positive rate of 0.00091% (Help Net Security). Alongside it launched Ad Protect against ad fraud from inception, plus an expanded bug-bounty program (Help Net Security). By then the company counted 180 people from more than 30 nationalities across offices in North America, Europe and Asia (Tech Funding News).
What this profile does not claim
This profile does not resolve the founding-year discrepancy: SecurityWeek and TechFundingNews say 2015, while SiliconANGLE’s funding coverage says 2014 — the profile uses 2015 and flags the disagreement. It does not present product performance figures (false-positive rates, fraud attempts stopped, data points processed) as audited facts; all are company-reported. It does not describe the YesWeHack bug-bounty partnership or DataDome’s 2024 bot report in detail, because those appeared only as uncited leads and were not independently verified. And it does not name a current valuation — none has been reported in the independent sources read.
Timeline
- 2014
- Linkfluence acquires TrendyBuzz, the social-media-monitoring company cofounded by Benjamin Fabre and Fabien Grenier. The pair conclude that hackers are using similar techniques to build bad bots that attack digital commerce — and that no easily deployable defense exists.
- 2015
- Fabre and Grenier found DataDome, their third company together, to eliminate bot-driven cyberattacks and online fraud with an AI-driven SaaS platform that decides in milliseconds whether to grant access to a page.
- 2021
- DataDome raises $35 million in a Series B led by Elephant, with ISAI participating, bringing total funding to nearly $40 million. CEO Fabien Grenier reports $15 million in ARR and expects it to double within a year; customers include Axel Springer, AngelList Talent, Australia Post and Foot Locker.
- 2023
- DataDome raises $42 million in a Series C led by InfraVia Growth, with Elephant and ISAI participating, for market expansion and R&D. In December it launches Device Check, an invisible CAPTCHA alternative using device-level proofs-of-work that cuts the false-positive rate to 0.001% in early access.
- 2024
- DataDome launches Account Protect for login and registration endpoints against account takeovers and fake accounts, and Ad Protect against ad fraud, completing its shift from bot defense to a cyberfraud platform.
What we could not verify
These claims came up in research and could not be confirmed. They are recorded here rather than published as fact or quietly dropped. If you hold a source that settles one, please tell us.
- Founding year is reported as 2015 (SecurityWeek, TechFundingNews) but 2014 in SiliconANGLE's funding coverage; the profile uses 2015.
- Total raised is $81M (SecurityWeek) vs $82M (TechFundingNews) — stated as about $81M.
- Product performance figures (false-positive rates, fraud attempts stopped, data points processed) are company-reported.
- The YesWeHack bug-bounty partnership and DataDome's 2024 bot report appeared only as uncited leads and are not asserted.
Sources
5 sources (5 tier 2), each opened and read against the claim it supports. Every source is independent of the subject; no first-party material is cited. See the source policy.
No first-party sources were used. The founding and funding record rests on VentureBeat, SecurityWeek, TechFundingNews and SiliconANGLE; the product expansion on SiliconANGLE and Help Net Security. Wikipedia was used only as a lead index, never cited.
- Supports: $42M Series C led by InfraVia Growth; existing Elephant + ISAI; total $81M; launched 2015; NY-based; product detects visit intent in real time; threats covered (payment fraud, DDoS, account takeover, scraping) Open original source
- Supports: $35M Series B led by Elephant, total ~$40M; cofounders Fabre & Grenier; third cofounded company; TrendyBuzz acquired by Linkfluence 2014; "same techniques used by hackers" origin; $15M ARR expecting 100% growth; 150+ customers (Axel Springer, AngelList Talent, Australia Post, Foot Locker); 1 trillion+ data points/day, 25 PoPs; Gartner/MIT-Darktrace context Open original source
- Supports: $42M led by InfraVia Growth; total $82M; founded 2015 by Fabre & Grenier; 180 members, 30+ nationalities, offices NA/Europe/Asia; 3 trillion data points/day; 300+ enterprises incl. Reddit, Patreon, AngelList; 250B fraud attempts stopped in 2022; InfraVia quote on "bot management as a foundation for fighting online fraud" Open original source
- Supports: Device Check announced Dec 2023 — invisible CAPTCHA alternative, device-level proofs-of-work via JS challenges; false positive .001% (early-access luxury retailer); <1 in 10,000 human requests challenged; Fabre quotes; Series C details corroboration Open original source
- Supports: Account Protect launch (account takeover + fake accounts); 5 trillion data points/day; luxury brand 75% of 100k–300k daily sign-ups fraudulent; 0.00091% false positive; GDPR/CCPA; also notes Ad Protect launch, bot bounty expansion, Device Check release, Series C close Open original source
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