Onfido vs Darktrace

Darktrace has a disclosed valuation of $5.3B, while Onfido's valuation is not publicly available, making a direct size comparison difficult. Darktrace employs 1000-5000 people.

Darktrace has raised more in total funding at $230M, compared to Onfido's $200M — a gap of $30M. Combined, the two companies have completed 4 known funding rounds.

Darktrace leads with an Awaira Score of 85/100, while Onfido sits at 68/100. That 17-point gap reflects real differences in funding, scale, and traction — it's not a vanity metric.

Onfido was founded by Husayn Kassai in 2012. Darktrace was founded by Poppy Gustafsson in 2013. Visit each company's profile on Awaira for a full founder biography.

Onfido: Onfido provided AI-powered identity verification services, using computer vision and machine learning to authenticate government-issued documents and biometric selfies for remote customer onboarding. The platform enabled banks, fintech companies, and regulated service providers to comply with Know Your Customer requirements without requiring in-person identity checks, processing identity verifications across more than 195 countries and supporting hundreds of document types.\n\nFounded in London in 2012, Onfido raised approximately $200 million from investors including SoftBank, TPG Growth, and Salesforce Ventures before being acquired by Entrust, the identity security company, in 2024 for approximately $400 million. At the time of acquisition, Onfido was processing hundreds of millions of identity checks annually for clients including HSBC, Revolut, and Bitstamp, making it one of the largest independent identity verification providers in the world.\n\nOnfido competed in the KYC and identity verification market alongside Jumio, Mitek, and AU10TIX, as well as large platform players including Experian and LexisNexis. The acquisition by Entrust gave Onfido access to a broader portfolio of physical and digital identity credentials and an enterprise sales channel with reach across government, banking, and enterprise security. The combined entity positions Entrust as a full-stack identity provider spanning physical documents, digital certificates, and AI-powered biometric verification. Darktrace: Darktrace is an AI cybersecurity company that applies unsupervised machine learning to detect and respond to cyber threats inside enterprise networks, email systems, cloud environments, and operational technology. The Cambridge-based company pioneered the concept of the enterprise immune system, training AI models on each organisation normal network behaviour to identify anomalies that indicate intrusion, insider threat, or ransomware activity in real time without requiring predefined threat signatures.\n\nThe company went public on the London Stock Exchange in 2021, raising approximately $230 million in its IPO after backing from Invoke Capital, Vitruvian Partners, and KKR. Darktrace reports over 9,000 enterprise customers across more than 100 countries, including significant deployments in financial services, healthcare, and critical infrastructure. The company has expanded from network detection to autonomous response capabilities through its Antigena product, which can quarantine infected systems and neutralise threats without human intervention.\n\nDarktrace competes in the AI-native cybersecurity market against CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, and Microsoft Defender, as well as against SIEM vendors including Splunk and IBM QRadar. The company valuation and public market performance have been volatile, reflecting broader uncertainty around AI cybersecurity spending cycles and questions about autonomous response effectiveness in complex enterprise environments. Its AI self-learning approach, applied consistently across network, email, cloud, and OT security, remains a distinctive architecture compared to detection-rule-based competitors, and the Poppy Gustafsson leadership profile has made Darktrace a flagship case study for UK technology entrepreneurship.

Onfido got there first, launching in 2012 — that's 1 year of extra runway. Darktrace didn't arrive until 2013. In AI, that kind of head start means more training data, deeper customer relationships, and a bigger talent moat.

Onfido has about 500-1000 employees; Darktrace has about 1000-5000. A bigger team usually means more revenue or heavier VC backing, but in AI, small teams can build at massive scale.

Yes — they're direct rivals. Both Onfido and Darktrace compete in AI Security, targeting many of the same buyers. If you're evaluating one, you should be looking at the other.