The company also announced a seed round co-led by Cubit Capital and Construct Capital bringing total funding to $14 million

WASHINGTON, April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Kibu, the human network and app-based platform that enables individuals and organizations to know exactly who they’re interacting with when it matters most, today announced a $10.5 million seed round to scale its platform. Leveraged by the world’s most discerning users, the platform is in use today across financial services, security consulting, family offices, and government agencies. The round was co-led by Cubit Capital and Construct Capital with major participation from Slow Ventures and Helena, and joined by angels like Nicole Perlroth, Judy Estrin, and David Carrico. This brings Kibu’s total funding to $14 million.

“The first era of digital and social networks was about reach as the platforms made it easy to find people, follow them, and share content at scale, but identity has been assumed, not verified,” said Ari Andersen, co-founder and CEO of Kibu. “In today’s world of deepfakes, bots, and AI-fraud, the critical question has shifted from ‘Who can I reach?’ to ‘Who can I trust?’ In a world where AI can fool any single verification moment, the only durable proof of identity is the network of real relationships around you.”

The Problem: Trust Can No Longer Be Assumed

It has never been harder to know who and what to trust. For decades, organizations have relied on identity-by-assumption: if the email address looks right, if the phone number matches, it’s trusted. That assumption is breaking down.

Credentials themselves have become the primary attack vector. Email accounts get compromised, phone numbers get spoofed through SIM swaps, and AI can now fake anyone in seconds.

Traditional security tools encrypt the channel, but they can’t verify the person. End-to-end encryption doesn’t prevent talking to an imposter. When the most consequential decisions happen across informal channels (Signal threads, WhatsApp groups, personal phones), there’s no way to establish trust before communication occurs. Kibu solves this by turning real-world trust into secure digital connections, establishing verification before communication occurs.

Kibu’s Approach: Building Trust Before It Matters

Whereas most security tools look for threats in real-time, Kibu fills an important gap in the market by launching a platform that establishes trust before it matters. By verifying human identity upfront, Kibu builds trust into the system rather than bolting it on afterward.

The Kibu app verifies its users through a simple, one-time process that binds identity to biometric-protected devices using liveness testing and cryptographic proof. This lets users build a network of confirmed contacts called Connections. Non-discoverable by design, Connections ensure that if someone is not invited, they cannot find you, contact you, or observe your network. Within this verified network, users can securely communicate, share sensitive information, and make group decisions knowing exactly who they’re talking to.

“We took military-grade cryptography and wrapped it in a consumer-focused product,” said Eftychis Gregos-Mourginakis, co-founder and COO of Kibu. “We anchor identity in real human relationships, verified cryptographically, and put control in the hands of users.”

Why Investors Are Backing Kibu

“The industry’s answer to AI threats has been more AI — an arms race with no finish line,” said Philip Carson, Partner at Cubit Capital. “Kibu reframes the problem around people and the relationships they actually trust. As work moves into informal channels, that’s the network that matters.”

“The identity verification market is growing rapidly and will exceed $150 billion by the 2030s as AI-driven impersonation accelerates,” said Rachel Holt, Cofounder and Managing Partner at Construct Capital. “As deception scales, demand for human-verified trust grows with it, and Kibu is uniquely positioned to serve the people and organizations at the center of these networks.”

With the new funding, Kibu will scale adoption and focus on building out its infrastructure to bring its trust fabric to other tools and workflows.

About Kibu

Kibu is a human network and app-based platform that enables individuals and organizations to know exactly who they’re interacting with when it matters most. Leveraged by the world’s most discerning users, it turns real-world trust into secure digital connections for high-stakes work in the AI era. Kibu cryptographically binds real human identity to verified interactions, enabling trusted communication, authorization, and decisions where trust must be established before action occurs.

Founded by experts in cybersecurity policy and privacy stewardship, Kibu is trusted by financial institutions, defense contractors, and security consultants coordinating sensitive work across organizational boundaries. Kibu is backed by Cubit Capital, Construct Capital, Slow Ventures, and Silver Buckshot Ventures.

For more information, download the Kibu app, visit the website, and follow Kibu on LinkedIn.

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SOURCE Kibu, Inc.