BOISE -- A big investment is bringing a lot of attention to Idaho's technology industry.
CVC Capital Partners will provide an $80 million growth equity investment to Kount Inc., a Boise-based company that provides fraud protection control to some of the biggest online retailers in the world.
"As far as I'm aware, it's the biggest private equity play that I've seen in recent history anywhere in Idaho," said Jay Larsen, president of the Idaho Technology Council.
Up until a few weeks ago, Kount was a wholly owned subsidiary of Keynetics, Idaho's largest privately held technology company.
Kount CEO Brad Wiskirchen says CVC's investment will open a lot of doors for the company.
"Having kind of the seal of approval of one of the largest private equity firms in the world is a huge endorsement for us," said Wiskirchen.
Kount launched in 2008 and almost immediately signed office supply giant Staples. Its end-to-end solution is used by thousands of merchants, payment processors, and payment service providers around the world, including Chase Paymentech, PayPal-owned Braintree, New Balance, Spotify and Bodybuilding.com.
The company helps retailers all over the world stop cyber criminals by monitoring online transactions in real-time.
"We tell them whether that's likely to be a fraudulent transaction or not, so we give them the tools that they need to make a decision as to whether to accept the transaction or not," said Wiskirchen.
He says the $80 million investment from the CVC growth fund will help Kount improve its products and hire more employees much faster than they had anticipated.
Right now, 68 people work at Kount and the company is already hiring for several positions.
For more information on openings, click here.
Wiskirchen says the company will most likely double the size of several of its departments including IT, sales and marketing in the next year.
"It's an endorsement of technology in Boise," added Wiskirchen regarding CVC's investment.
The President of the Idaho Technology Council told us that endorsement is exciting because it will have a ripple effect, bringing more talent and more capital to the Treasure Valley.
"They're going to come in and really help Kount go up in scale," said Larsen.
In turn, people will look at Idaho and Idaho's technology industry differently. Kount's CEO wants to keep that momentum going.
"I think this is a significant step in getting us from why Boise to why not Boise?" said Wiskirchen.
In a news release, Managing Director at CVC Growth Partners Jason Glass said, "The payments fraud and security industry is one that we have been actively targeting for a while, and we identified Kount as the obvious industry leader."
"This investment is perfectly aligned with CVC Growth Partners' strategy of partnering with uniquely positioned technology companies in large, growing markets," added John Clark, managing partner at CVC Growth Partners. "We are very pleased to work alongside Brad and his team to build on Kount's success to date."
