Founded 2011 in Tel Aviv by Avi Turgeman (ex-Military Intelligence) and Uri Rivner. $432M raised, $1.3B Permira valuation. $100M+ ARR. Behavioral biometrics for 40+ major banks.
Behavioral biometrics for financial fraud detection · Founded 2011 by Avi Turgeman and Uri Rivner · HQ Tel Aviv · $432M raised · Permira acquired majority stake at $1.3B (May 2024) · $100M+ ARR · EBITDA breakeven · 40+ of the world's largest financial institutions.
What Does BioCatch Do?
| Company | BioCatch Ltd. |
| Founded | 2011, Tel Aviv |
| Co-founders | Avi Turgeman · Uri Rivner · the late Benny Rosenbaum |
| Headquarters | Tel Aviv, Israel |
| Global offices | New York, London, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Sydney, Mumbai |
| Product | Behavioral biometrics — analyzes 500+ bio-behavioral parameters (keystroke dynamics, mouse movements, touch patterns, cognitive behavior) to detect fraud in digital banking |
| Total funding | $432M across 7 rounds |
| Valuation | $1.3B (Permira acquisition, May 2024) |
| Revenue | $100M+ ARR (centaur status, Q4 2024); EBITDA breakeven for fiscal year |
| Customers | 40+ of the world's largest financial institutions including Barclays, Citi, HSBC, National Australia Bank |
| Employees | ~460 |
| Patents | 40+ |
| Status | Permira majority-owned · growing toward IPO-readiness |
Who Founded BioCatch and Where Did the Technology Come From?
Avi Turgeman, BioCatch's primary technical founder, is a former Israeli Military Intelligence officer. During cyberthreat operations, Turgeman identified that every person interacts with digital devices in a measurably unique way — the speed and rhythm of keystrokes, the pressure and angle of touchscreen taps, the acceleration patterns of mouse movements, the cognitive cadence of form-filling. These behavioral signatures are as distinctive as fingerprints but far harder to forge because they emerge from the unconscious motor and cognitive patterns of the user.
Turgeman teamed with Uri Rivner, a cybersecurity veteran with deep expertise in fraud-detection systems, and the late Benny Rosenbaum to found BioCatch in Tel Aviv in 2011. The company's early technology patent portfolio, now over 40 registered patents, established the scientific and legal foundation for behavioral biometrics as a distinct category within the identity-verification and fraud-detection markets.
How Does BioCatch's Behavioral Biometrics Platform Work?
BioCatch's platform continuously monitors 500+ bio-behavioral, cognitive, and physiological parameters during digital banking sessions. The system builds a behavioral profile for each user — how they navigate screens, how they enter personal information (using long-term memory patterns for addresses and birthdates versus short-term recall for one-time codes), how they respond to UI friction, and how their device-interaction patterns change under social-engineering pressure.
The technology operates invisibly: there is no user enrollment, no biometric capture prompt, no friction added to the banking session. The system runs in the background, scoring each session against the user's established behavioral baseline and flagging sessions that deviate, the signature of account takeover, social engineering, or authorized-push-payment fraud where the legitimate user is being manipulated into transferring funds to a fraudster.
Why Did Permira Acquire a Majority Stake in BioCatch?
In May 2024, Permira, the global private equity firm, acquired a majority stake in BioCatch at a valuation of $1.3 billion. The transaction was structured as a buyout of earlier investors rather than a standard growth round, giving Permira majority control while the founding team and management retained operational leadership under CEO Gadi Mazor. Permira subsequently bought out remaining earlier-stage investors to consolidate its majority position.
The acquisition came as BioCatch crossed $100 million in annual recurring revenue in Q4 2024, centaur status, and achieved EBITDA breakeven for the fiscal year. For a cybersecurity SaaS company serving highly regulated financial institutions, the combination of $100M+ ARR, profitability, and a defensible patent portfolio makes BioCatch a candidate for either a Permira-sponsored IPO or a strategic sale to a major financial-infrastructure or identity-platform acquirer.
Why Did Four Major Banks Invest Directly in BioCatch?
In October 2020, four of the world's largest banks, Barclays, Citi, HSBC, and National Australia Bank, invested $20 million directly in BioCatch, extending its Series C round to $168 million. Strategic investment from the customers themselves is rare in enterprise SaaS and signals that BioCatch's technology had become embedded enough in bank fraud-detection infrastructure that the banks had an institutional interest in the company's survival and independence.
What Is BioCatch Trust?
In 2025, BioCatch launched BioCatch Trust Australia, the world's first inter-bank, behavior-based financial crime intelligence-sharing network. The concept: participating banks contribute anonymized behavioral signals to a shared intelligence layer, enabling any bank in the network to benefit from fraud patterns detected at another. The model addresses a structural weakness in financial-crime prevention, that fraudsters move between banks, but banks historically do not share detection intelligence in real time. If the Australian pilot scales, the BioCatch Trust network becomes a category of its own: a private-sector behavioral-intelligence consortium for financial crime.
Where Does BioCatch Sit in Israel's Cyber-Finance Ecosystem?
BioCatch sits at the intersection of Israel's cybersecurity ecosystem and its fintech sector. The founding team's military-intelligence background places BioCatch in the Unit 8200 lineage, while its customer base of banks, not enterprises, places it in the financial-technology vertical. The company is a peer to Fireblocks (digital-asset infrastructure for banks), Payoneer (cross-border payments), and ThetaRay (AI-powered transaction monitoring for financial crime), Israeli companies that build the security and compliance layer underneath global banking rather than the consumer-facing products on top of it. The same Unit 8200 talent pipeline that produced BioCatch also feeds the defense-tech and cybersecurity cluster headquartered in Herzliya's corporate corridor, roughly 15 kilometers north of BioCatch's Tel Aviv base.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who founded BioCatch?
Avi Turgeman (former Military Intelligence officer), Uri Rivner, and the late Benny Rosenbaum co-founded BioCatch in Tel Aviv in 2011.
What does BioCatch do?
BioCatch provides behavioral biometrics, analyzing how users interact with their devices to detect fraud, account takeover, and social-engineering attacks in digital banking sessions.
Who owns BioCatch?
Permira, the global private equity firm, acquired a majority stake in May 2024 at a $1.3 billion valuation.
What is BioCatch's revenue?
BioCatch crossed $100 million ARR in Q4 2024 and achieved EBITDA breakeven for the fiscal year.
Which banks use BioCatch?
Over 40 of the world's largest financial institutions, including Barclays, Citi, HSBC, and National Australia Bank, four of which are direct investors in the company.
How many patents does BioCatch have?
Over 40 registered patents in behavioral biometrics.
Is BioCatch going public?
No IPO has been announced, but the combination of Permira ownership, $100M+ ARR, and profitability positions BioCatch for a potential listing or strategic exit.
Primary Sources
BioCatch company disclosures and about page (Q2 2026 fact sheet). Permira acquisition announcement (May 2024). NoCamels and Times of Israel coverage of Series C and bank investment round (2020). Tracxn, PitchBook, and StartupIntros funding data. Startup Nation Central company profile. Growjo competitive analysis.
Related Olam Coverage
Unit 8200 · Fireblocks · Israeli Fintech Complete Map · Israeli Cyber Citation Share Index 2026 · Herzliya: The Corporate Corridor · The Builders
