Ping Identity, a US company specialising in digital identity management solutions for businesses, has announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Keyless Technologies, a deep tech start-up founded in London in 2019 by a team of young Italian innovators, pioneers in passwordless and privacy-preserving biometric authentication. The transaction, which will be finalised in the coming months, opens a new chapter in Keyless’ history. <\/p>\n\n
Keyless was born from a meeting between Italian entrepreneur Andrea Carmignani and German Fabian Eberle during an MBA at INSEAD. In 2017, the idea took shape and became a project. The technical team was consolidated with two Italian experts in cryptography, Giuseppe Ateniese and Paolo Gasti (now CTO). <\/strong> Tra Singapore, Londra e la Silicon Valley la societ\u00e0 muove i primi passi e raccoglie i primi capitali; nell\u2019estate 2019, con il supporto di Luiss\/LA4G, the centre of gravity returns to Italy. In this initial phase, Keyless also obtains the support of Primo Miglio, P101, Smart&Start Invitalia and Intesa San Paolo. <\/strong>, which contribute to consolidating the start-up’s growth and developing its technological potential.<\/p>\n\n During the pandemic, thanks to the Luiss\u2013Cisco collaboration, Keyless signed its first large-scale adoptions, paving the way for further orders.<\/p>\n\n In November 2021, Keyless was acquired by Sift, a San Francisco-based unicorn in digital trust and safety: a move that validated the company’s privacy-preserving technology internationally and accelerated its adoption in the enterprise sector. <\/p>\n\n In 2023, Keyless and Sift mutually agreed to a strategic separation: the transaction restored Keyless’s independence, allowing both companies to pursue distinct roadmaps and positioning more quickly. Thanks to the spin-out, Keyless was able to preserve jobs and keep its team of over 50 people intact, thus safeguarding the skills and know-how it had accumulated. <\/p>\n\n The new structure triggers strong growth: Keyless raises $10 million led by Rialto Ventures, bringing total funding to $30 million, and in 2024, revenues grow by 700% year-on-year. This journey also takes it to the Quirinale, where Keyless is presented as a case of Italian excellence at the invitation of President Sergio Mattarella. <\/p>\n\n Today, Keyless is chosen by leading Italian banks such as Intesa SanPaolo and new-generation fintech companies such as N26 to reduce identity theft and improve the user experience with instant authentication that complies with key global privacy and compliance requirements.<\/p>\n\n With Keyless joining the Ping Identity ecosystem, privacy-preserving biometrics will become central to the group’s identity verification strategy. Ping Identity, founded in 2002 and headquartered in Denver, is recognised globally as a leading provider of zero trust, single sign-on and multi-factor authentication solutions, protecting over 8 billion digital identities every day and serving more than half of the Fortune 100 companies. <\/p>\n\n The integration will enable Keyless’ authentication technology to be extended globally, strengthening fraud protection and improving the access experience for users and enterprise customers.<\/p>\n\n “Bringing our technology into an ecosystem that protects billions of authentications is an extraordinary achievement for a company born from Italian ingenuity,” said Carmignani, who is also the company’s CEO (pictured with the other founders), in a statement. “This agreement will allow Keyless to grow further, raising industry standards and making every online identification more secure and simple, while fully respecting privacy.”<\/p>\n\n \u201cIn an age where trust is constantly being tested, organisations must offer more secure, private and simple digital experiences,\u201d says Andre Durand, CEO and founder of Ping Identity. \u201cBy joining forces with Keyless, we want to make privacy-preserving authentication as simple as a glance, instilling greater trust in every digital interaction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n I valori economici dell’operazione non sono stati resi noti. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The US company takes control of the Italian-British start-up to integrate digital identity protection solutions<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":125,"featured_media":148151,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1325],"tags":[1369,1334,1486,1137,1136],"companies":[],"journalist":[1518],"class_list":["post-148167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-italian-startups","tag-acquisition","tag-cybersecurity-en","tag-exit-en","tag-italy-en","tag-startup-en-2","journalist-editorial-staff-en"],"featured_sizes_urls":{"thumbnail":{"src":"https:\/\/www.startupbusiness.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Keyless_Founders.webp","width":150,"height":90,"crop":false,"srcset":false,"alt":"cybersecurity startup"},"large":{"src":"https:\/\/www.startupbusiness.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Keyless_Founders.webp","width":1024,"height":618,"crop":false,"srcset":false,"alt":"cybersecurity startup"},"2048x2048":{"src":"https:\/\/www.startupbusiness.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Keyless_Founders.webp","width":1280,"height":772,"crop":false,"srcset":false,"alt":"cybersecurity startup"}},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n