DLA Piper advises Authada on financing round

DLA Piper has advised Darmstadt-based cybersecurity company Authada GmbH on a financing round that raised a mid-seven-digit amount in total. The lead investor was InfoCert, a subsidiary of the Tinexta Group, which has acquired a 16.7% stake in Authada. The agreement defines the terms of the commercial cooperation and the technical strategies that InfoCert and Authada will implement. These include the expansion of InfoCert's presence to the strategic DACH area, the joint project to create a European Champion of Digital Trust Services, and options that, under certain conditions enable InfoCert to acquire 100% of Authada.

Authada, a portfolio company of Frankfurt-based FinLab AG, is a German provider of cutting-edge technology for identification solutions. TAUTHADA GmbH is the only certified identification service provider (BSI TR-03128) whose proprietary eID core is certified by the Federal Office for Information Security (Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnologie (BSI)) (BSI TR-03124 and BSI TR-03105). This technology allows the immediate reading of the data stored on the German electronic identity card. More than 90 percent of the population in Germany already use the electronic ID card and full coverage will be achieved by the end of 2020.

InfoCert is the largest European Certification Authority, active in over twenty countries. The company provides digitization, eDelivery, Digital Signature and digital preservation of documents and is an AgID-accredited digital identity manager in the SPID (Public System for Digital Identity Management) system.

The DLA Piper team was led by partner Simon Vogel and included senior associate Michael Rebholz (both Private Equity/Venture Capital, Munich).