Estonian unicorn Veriff lays off 12% of its employees

Tallinn-based identity verification company Veriff is laying off 12%, or 66 people, of its employees across teams around the world. As a result of the layoff, the company will retain just over 500 employees. This is happening only a year after the company became a unicorn by closing a $100 million Series C round in January 2022.

• Founded in 2015 by the Estonians Janer Gorohhov and Kaarel Kotkas, Veriff is an online identity verification startup that helps businesses protect their customers from identity fraud. The solution can distinguish online fraud using the combined forces of machine learning and specialists. 

• In January 2022, Veriff became Estonia’s sixth unicorn. Back then the company closed a $100 million Series C round and reached a total of $192.3 million in funding over seven investment rounds.
• Now the company is undergoing layoffs, which will mainly concern its team in Estonia. According to the company’s CEO Kaarel Kotkas, 42 people will be laid off from the Estonian office.

“The decision to initiate collective redundancies certainly did not come easily, and I sincerely regret that we had to take this step. I am grateful to all Veriff employees for their dedicated work and contribution,”

Kaarel Kotkas commented to DigiPRO

• It is not the first layoffs in the CEE startups. Last month, Polish edtech Brainly announced it fired 23 employees across teams in Poland, Spain, and the US. As Jakub Piwnik, Brainly’s communication director told Sifted, that this resulted from the fact that the company “reduced the focus on initiatives that are not in our long-term strategy and plans for 2023.”