12 April 2024 – Entrust Corp., a world leader in trusted payments, identities, and data security, purchased Onfido, a startup that utilizes artificial intelligence to authenticate customer identities. The sale will provide funding for the university’s entrepreneurial initiatives and the establishment of new businesses.
In 2012, Onfido became one of the first companies to join Oxford University Innovation’s Incubator. This entrepreneurial platform supported the technology created by Husayn Kassai, Eamon Jubbawy, and Ruhul Amin, three student founders. In 2013, the team at Saïd Business School was awarded an early phase grant of £20,000 from the Entrepreneurship Centre’s Oxford Seed Fund.
The Oxford Seed Fund investment was returned eighty times over via the sale of Onfido. “In 2012, at 22 years old, building a new way to verify identities online felt like a moonshot,” said Mr Kassai, co-founder and former CEO of Onfido.
Conclusion
Our confidence and the company were greatly boosted by the support we received from Oxford Innovation’s first incubator. As one of our founders put it, “Oxford’s leap of faith into a nascent idea was rocket fuel, and I am incredibly grateful to Oxford University and the entire ecosystem for supporting our journey.”
