Transcend Raises $40 Million to Grow Data Privacy Platform

Transcend raised $40 million in a Series B funding round to continue growing its suite of privacy and artificial intelligence governance solutions.

The company started with a “virtual kill-switch for consumers to delete data” and now offers 12 products that help enterprises understand and manage personal data, privacy tasks, risks and AI systems, Transcend said in a Tuesday (May 28) press release.

“Privacy problems have to be solved at the data system level, with infrastructure that orchestrates personal data directly across all business systems,” Transcend CEO Ben Brook said in the release. “That’s how we’ve built the Transcend platform since day one, and this latest fundraise will help us meet the demand for a transition to modern privacy technology.”

The company’s data privacy platform encodes privacy controls directly into business systems; handles data discovery and classification, consent and preference management; and automates responses to data deletion and access requests, according to the release.

Transcend’s latest funding round comes at a time when the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is marking its sixth anniversary, the EU AI Act is approaching and a draft of U.S. federal privacy law is in the works, Brook said in the release.

In this environment, the company’s platform reduces risk and enables compliant data usage, per the release.

Transcend’s latest funding round was led by StepStone Group, according to the release.

“Transcend takes a radically different approach to solving modern data privacy problems by tackling it at the code level, which is one of the many reasons we’ve invested in the company,” John Avirett, partner at StepStone Group, said in the release. “What’s also remarkable is how often they’re moving companies with complex data requirements off inefficient legacy platforms and point solutions, and onto their next-generation platform…”

In one development around privacy, OpenAI is facing an EU privacy complaint filed by a European privacy rights group on behalf of an undisclosed individual alleging that the company’s ChatGPT created false personal information about the complainant and could not fully rectify the inaccuracies.

Respecting privacy is one of the biggest concerns around AI, and the appropriate use of data and the assurance of that data’s integrity is at the heart of the solution.

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