Edison Partners, the growth equity investment firm, today announced leading a $12 million growth investment in Anonos, the data privacy and enablement technology platform provider with operations in Boulder, Colorado, New York and London. The company will use the capital to drive market adoption for its pioneering Privacy Rights Management® solutions that enable organizations to lawfully use personal data and still respect and comply with data privacy rights.
Data privacy platforms are part of the $124 billion worldwide market for information security solutions and growing at double the rate of the overall market. Data privacy is top of mind with new laws such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and proposed U.S. federal privacy laws. All of these regulations include steep fines to companies for privacy violations. Anonos’ patented solution enables full compliance with data privacy laws while also allowing data to continue to be distributed, shared and combined for use in business decisions, analysis, AI and ML applications.
“Companies are waking up to data privacy as a strategic and competitive advantage. Anonos offers the most sophisticated and accurate way for companies to realize customer data insights while fully complying with the GDPR and pending data privacy laws,” said Daniel Herscovici, Partner at Edison Partners who led the investment.
The Anonos Variant Twin® system leverages dynamic pseudonymisation to replace personal identifiers, such as a person’s name and date of birth, with unique de-identifiers that prevent attribution of the data to a specific person without permission. Privacy policies are digitally embedded in the data to automatically protect the data from unauthorized use when it’s shared within or outside of an organization. The controls also enable the relinking of de-identifiers back to individuals to support lawful business purposes. Anonos calls this process Privacy Rights Management.
“Similar to how iTunes and Netflix on behalf of publishers use Digital Rights Management to control use of music and movies, Privacy Rights Management introduces businesses to data protection by design and by default to control the use and sharing of personal data,” said Anonos co-founder and CEO Gary LaFever. “At this pivotal time when policymakers and businesses have an opportunity to establish a shared ethical framework for data privacy, Anonos supplies the missing technological ingredient of digital controls that ensure lawful, ethical and sustainable data use, sharing and combination.”
“With Anonos, we’ve reconciled the fundamental tension between data privacy and data value. Business leaders, data scientists and data privacy leaders who have historically faced the either-or choice of being compliant or having highly accurate data available for decision-making can now have both,” said Anonos co-founder and President Ted Myerson. “We’re thrilled to have Edison Partners’ and Partner Daniel Herscovici backing Anonos as we expand the availability of our platform globally to foster data-driven innovation in a privacy-respectful way.”
Named as a Gartner “Cool Vendor,” Anonos provides its technology directly and via sell-through arrangements. They are actively engaged with large enterprises in heavily regulated sectors including financial services, healthcare and telecommunications. Anonos has seven granted patents and more than 70 additional pending domestic and international patents related to its technology.
“Business partners for 18 years, Gary LaFever and Ted Myerson develop technology that helps organizations turn regulation into a competitive advantage. They have operational expertise developing global businesses, a history of seeing marketplace needs before they arrive, and the vision and experience of building complex platforms in response to those marketplace trends,” said Herscovici. “We’re excited to partner with Anonos to accelerate and expand their technology platform across financial, healthcare, telecom and other data-driven industries that rely on sustainable consumer data insights.
Anonos’ co-founders previously founded FTEN, the fastest growing software company on the Inc. 500 list two years in a row with revenue growth of 28X and 45X, which was acquired by NASDAQ for its real-time data risk management technology that NASDAQ integrated into 100+ exchanges around the globe to enable advanced electronic trading while simultaneously reducing systemic risk in financial marketplaces.
Edison Partners has financed and guided more than 220 private companies, a third of which have been in the enterprise solutions space. Edison’s current enterprise solutions portfolio includes All Traffic Solutions, Blue Medora, Bricata, Emplify, ExecVision, Giant Oak, Jornaya, Northpass, NS8, PathFactory, Predata, Sigstr, Suuchi, TripleLift, Terminus, and Zagster. Notable exits in the sector include Archive Systems, Billtrust, eSentire, ItemMaster, InSoft, Kemp, Logfire, Notable Solutions, Operative, Tangoe, Telarix, Virtual Edge, and VFA.
About Anonos
Anonos® enables lawful analytics, AI and ML that preserves 100% of data accuracy. Anonos dynamic pseudonymisation technology reconciles conflicts between protecting the rights of individuals and achieving business and societal objectives to use, share, combine and relink data in a lawful manner. Anonos patented Variant Twins® enable sharing, collaboration, and analytics of personal data by technologically enforcing dynamic, fine-grained privacy, security and data protection policies in compliance with the GDPR and other evolving data privacy regulations. Anonos overcomes the shortcomings of other solutions that were "good enough" before the GDPR and evolving global data privacy laws, but fail to support new requirements for lawful analytics, AI and ML.
Gartner awarded Anonos “Cool Vendor” status for its innovative BigPrivacy® technology that creates non-identifying Variant Twin versions of personalized data to enable Heads of Data Analytics, Chief Data Officers, Chief Innovation Officers, Chief Marketing Officers, Chief Medical Officers and Chief Risk Officers to maintain the confidentiality of personal data for lawful data sharing and collaboration, profiling, relinking for next best action analysis, and secure Multi-Party Computing (MPC).
About Edison Partners
For more than 30 years, Edison Partners has been helping CEOs and their executive teams grow and scale successful companies. The firm's investment team brings extensive investing and operating experience to each investment. Through a unique combination of growth capital and the Edison Edge platform, consisting of operating centers of excellence, the Edison Director Network, and executive education programs, Edison employs a truly integrated approach to accelerating growth and creating value for businesses. A team of experts in financial technology, healthcare IT and enterprise solution sectors, Edison targets high-growth companies with $5 to $25 million in revenue; investments also include buyouts, recapitalizations, spinouts and secondary stock purchases.
