Fingerprint

Overview

Fingerprint is a Chicago-based device-intelligence company whose API helps developers identify the devices visiting their websites and apps, with fraud prevention as the primary goal (TechCrunch). Founded in 2019 by Dan Pinto and Valentin Vasilyev, it grew out of an open-source browser-fingerprinting library and, by its October 2023 Series C, had raised $77 million in total funding while serving 6,000 customers (TechCrunch). This is the device-identification startup, not the Swedish biometrics firm Fingerprint Cards AB, a distinct company that was absorbed into Precise Biometrics in 2026 (TipRanks).

From open-source library to commercial platform

The company’s origin is unusual among fraud-prevention vendors: it began as a popular open-source project rather than a proprietary product. Co-founder and CTO Valentin Vasilyev had already created the open-source Fingerprint.js library before the company existed — VentureBeat dates the project to 2012, while TechCrunch’s 2020 account describes it as five years old, implying around 2015 (VentureBeat, TechCrunch). Co-founder and CEO Dan Pinto met Vasilyev at Machinio, Pinto’s previous startup, where he hired Vasilyev as one of the company’s first software engineers (TechCrunch). After Machinio was sold in 2018, Pinto left about a year later to find a way to build a business on the open-source project’s success, and Pinto soon joined him (TechCrunch).

The company launched publicly in January 2020 as FingerprintJS with $4 million in financing (TechCrunch). At launch, the open-source library already reported 5 million downloads and use by 8,000 websites, with hundreds of paying customers (TechCrunch). That community footprint became the engine of its growth: by February 2021 the library had surpassed 10 million downloads and 12,000 GitHub stars with over 8,000 websites actively using it (YourStory), and by November 2021 it had been downloaded more than 14 million times and was used by 12% of the top 500 websites by traffic, including eBay, Coinbase, and Yahoo (VentureBeat).

Device intelligence as fraud infrastructure

The technology combines hundreds of signals inside a browser to generate a unique identifier used to detect unusual behavior, such as devices entering stolen credit cards or the same browser using multiple IP addresses (YourStory). The signals range from installed fonts and screen resolution to deep technical details like how a device completes its SSL handshake with the server (TechCrunch). The open-source version uses techniques including canvas fingerprinting, audio sampling, WebGL fingerprinting, font detection, and browser plugin probing (TechCrunch).

The commercial model splits the product in two. The open-source library remains available, but the company makes the bulk of its revenue from a cloud-hosted SaaS edition — FingerprintJS Pro at the time — which adds client- and server-side techniques, machine learning, and AI tooling for higher accuracy (VentureBeat). Pinto told TechCrunch the split was deliberate: the open-source identification techniques had “been in the open too long, and bad actors have figured out ways to get around it,” while the pro techniques could be kept private and worked significantly better (TechCrunch). The company claims its platform identifies 99.5% of returning web browsers in less than 500 milliseconds of processing time (VentureBeat).

Documented fraud use cases include protecting login pages from automated attacks and phishing, feeding data to payment processors to catch fraud, detecting account sharing on SaaS and subscription services, securing cryptocurrency exchanges, protecting paywalls against incognito mode and VPNs, and restricting cheaters from online games and gambling services (VentureBeat). By late 2021 the company was also developing a JavaScript bot-detection API and an Account Sharing Prevention product aimed at reducing sharing of per-user paid accounts (VentureBeat).

Funding and scale

The funding history tracks the open-source adoption curve. After the initial $4 million financing, FingerprintJS raised an $8 million Series A in February 2021 led by Nexus Venture Partners, with participation from Uncorrelated Ventures, Hack VC, ERA’s Remarkable Ventures fund, and Indeed co-founder Rony Kahan (YourStory). At that point the company reported more than 200 paying customers on self-serve sign-up with usage-based pricing, and planned to open an AWS Mumbai data center for Indian clients (YourStory).

In November 2021 the company raised a $32 million Series B led by Craft Ventures, with Nexus Venture Partners and Uncorrelated Ventures participating, bringing total funding to $44 million (VentureBeat). The then-33-person company reported a 300% increase in annual recurring revenue that year on the strength of 2,000 paying Pro customers (VentureBeat). In October 2023, now operating as Fingerprint, it raised a $33 million Series C led by Nexus Venture Partners with Uncorrelated Ventures participating, taking total funding to $77 million (TechCrunch). By then it had grown to 100 employees and 6,000 customers, including TD Ameritrade, Western Union, and US Bank (TechCrunch).

The privacy question

Browser fingerprinting sits in tension with privacy regulation and browser-level defenses, and the company’s public stance is that its design sidesteps the conflict. Pinto argues that cookies and IP addresses no longer work for device identification given browser-technology changes and VPN use, telling TechCrunch that “fundamentally being anonymous on the internet means that you can do bad things” (TechCrunch). On privacy law, he says the company does not collect personal information: the identifier is anonymous even from the company’s side, so customers compare anonymous identifiers to find patterns and block them if needed, without the company knowing who the person is (TechCrunch).

The company has argued that because its service is used for fraud detection rather than traffic tracking, it does not need visitor consent under the EU’s GDPR or California’s CCPA — a legal position stated by the company and reported by VentureBeat, not an independent legal finding (VentureBeat). Technical headwinds are real regardless: Google Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox attempts to prevent fingerprinting by hiding hardware and software information from websites, Safari blocks a number of tracking technologies including some fingerprinting attempts, and sophisticated actors use tools like FraudFox and Antidetect to spoof system components (VentureBeat).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not resolve when the open-source project began — VentureBeat says 2012, TechCrunch’s 2020 account implies around 2015 — and it does not state the exact date of the FingerprintJS-to-Fingerprint rebrand, which no independent source pinned down. The “formerly known as Elvo” label appearing in company directories is not repeated here because no independent news source verified it. The 99.5% accuracy figure and the GDPR/CCPA consent argument are the company’s own claims as reported by the press, not independently audited findings. No independent coverage of the company’s 2024–2026 developments surfaced in this research, so nothing is stated about its current product lineup, headcount, or valuation beyond the October 2023 Series C.