Persona
Also a provider — view Persona’s profile →“Can a horizontal identity verification platform become the trust layer for the agentic-AI internet?”
Founded2018
HQSan Francisco, California, USA
FoundersRick Song, Charles Yeh
Latest roundSeries D, 2025
Valuation$2B (2025)
IndustryInfrastructure / KYC
The story
Persona started in 2018 as a horizontal identity verification platform, deliberately not targeting a single vertical the way competitors did. Over time it expanded from fraud/KYC into KYB, AML screening, age assurance (notably powering Reddit's age gate), and workforce/customer identity for non-financial hosts. The Series D thesis explicitly reframes the company around identity for agentic AI — verifying humans behind LLM access, developer accounts, and platform interactions.
Last 12 months
Product timeline
2018
Persona founded by Rick Song and Charles Yeh, former Dropbox and Square engineers.· founding
2025
Raised $200M Series D at $2B valuation, positioning as the verified identity layer for the agentic AI world.· funding
The stack
2 layers disclosed in Persona’s embedded-finance stack
Card network
KYC
in the full report
Accounting gap: none
6 more providers across 1 layer, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.