background-checks
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TraqCheck checked the résumé. Now it wants to find the person.
After building a business in background checks, TraqCheck is moving into AI recruitment. Its $8 million Series A backs a bet that employers will buy the work, not just another dashboard.
They Burned $550,000 Selling Trust. Then The Lifetime Value Co. Learned to Sell Curiosity
Josh Levy and Ross Cohen spent 11 months pitching an identity badge nobody would buy. Their pivot - from asking people to verify themselves to helping customers investigate the world around them - became a portfolio of data products used by millions.
The Company That Reads the Internet So HR Doesn't Have To
Fama built AI that scans 10,000-plus public sources to catch the red flags a resume hides - then convinced the background-check giants to run on its engine.
Players Health
Players Health is a Minneapolis-based sports insurtech that combines a digital risk-management platform with tailored insurance products so youth, amateur and collegiate sports organizations can keep athletes safe and stay compliant. Founded in 2015 by former pro football player Tyrre Burks, the company pairs safety assessments, background checks, incident tracking and HIPAA-compliant education with sports-specific coverage. It supports more than 40,000 sports organizations and over 5.5 million athletes, and in December 2024 closed a $60 million Series C led by Bluestone Equity Partners.
Biometrica (aka Safience)
Biometrica - now operating under the name Safience - is a Las Vegas-based public-safety and identity-intelligence company that helps law enforcement, casinos, schools and critical infrastructure find specific threats and missing victims without watching everyone. Its platform pairs a law-enforcement-only database of verified identities (UMbRA) with edge sensors (RTIS/RVIS) that capture a single still image, purge non-matches immediately, and store no biometric data on the device. The company's pitch is deliberately contrarian for its industry: public safety without mass surveillance, summed up in its tagline 'Being Big Brother Is a Choice.'
TransCrypts
TransCrypts is a blockchain-based digital identity and credential verification company that lets people own and instantly share verified employment, income, education, and health records. Founded in 2020 by cousins Zain Zaidi and Ali Zaheer, it replaces the slow, costly background-check pipeline with permission-based, fraud-proof verification - including JustScreen, billed as the world's first free background check service. Backed by Pantera Capital, Mark Cuban, and others, it serves millions of users and hundreds of enterprises, including Fortune 100 and 500 companies.
KarmaCheck
KarmaCheck is an AI-driven background check and credentialing platform that makes employment screening faster, cheaper, and more accurate. Founded in 2019 by LinkedIn co-founder and founding CTO Eric Ly, the company combines real-time identity verification, criminal and credential checks, drug screening, and occupational health into an API-first platform that plugs into the ATS, HRIS, and HCM systems staffing and healthcare teams already use. In 2025 it launched the industry's first MCP server, letting AI agents run verifications through plain-language prompts.
Wingspan
Wingspan is a New York-based payroll and management platform built specifically for the 1099 contractor workforce. It automates the full contractor lifecycle - onboarding, W-9 verification, background checks, same-day payments, tax withholding, and automated 1099 filing - and now ships that stack as an embeddable, white-label API (Wingspan Embed) for HR, HCM, and PEO platforms. The company has processed more than $3 billion in contractor payments and counts Teladoc Health and CRU Group among its customers.
Checkr, Inc.
Checkr is a San Francisco-based HR-tech company that uses AI and a modern API to run background checks at internet speed. Founded in 2014 by Daniel Yanisse and Jonathan Perichon out of Y Combinator, it processes screenings for Uber, Instacart, DoorDash, OpenAI and thousands of other employers - and lobbies hard for fair-chance hiring along the way.
Instawork
Instawork is an AI-powered on-demand staffing platform that connects businesses with vetted hourly workers across hospitality, warehousing, food service, retail, and light industrial sectors. Operating in 400+ cities across the U.S. and Canada, the company uses over 2 billion data signals to match businesses with pre-vetted workers, achieving a 98% worker show rate and filling 90% of jobs within 24 hours — metrics that traditional staffing agencies rarely approach. Founded in 2015 and backed by Y Combinator, Benchmark, Greylock, and TCV, Instawork has raised $171M and serves 15,000+ businesses, with a network of 10M+ workers. The platform handles everything from a single catering shift to large-scale distribution center operations.
Truora Inc.
Truora is a Latin America-focused identity and customer engagement platform that helps companies verify users, run background checks, and onboard customers - largely through WhatsApp. Founded in 2018 by Twilio and McKinsey alumni and backed by Y Combinator, Accel, and Propel, it powers KYC and fraud prevention for Rappi, Bancolombia, Mercado Libre, Didi, and hundreds of other LatAm businesses.