Two Hamburg startups become one: Nect acquires Acadias, the provider of a fully automated platform for money laundering checks. Till Kramer, who founded Acadias in 2023 together with Louis Thissen, is joining the Nect team and will be responsible for product innovation in future.
© Dirk Bruniecki: Benny Bennet Jürgens and Carlo Ulbrich, founders of Nect
The acquisition is a further step towards internationalisation
The acquisition further expands Nect's expertise in the field of personal identification and verification. The Acadias platform automates and digitalises the verification of natural persons and legal entities for regulated professions and industries and offers AI-supported risk analyses and secure client management. Nect customers can now utilise a holistic solution that also includes the verification of sanctions lists and politically exposed persons.
Nect recently received a revenue-based investment of 2.5 million euros from growth investor Round2Capital, located in Vienna. Part of the money is now being channelled into the acquisition of Acadias and the associated expansion of the product portfolio. The expansion also goes hand in hand with the goal of making Nect a market leader in Europe.
The startup was founded in 2017 by Benny Bennet Jürgens and Carlo Ulbricht. With products such as Nect Wallet, Nect Ident and Nect Sign, the company offers biometrics-based solutions for secure, user-friendly and EU-compliant identity verification and electronic signatures. In 2021, the startup's automated ID process was certified as the first AI-based solution to offer the same level of trust as physical identity verification. Nect's products have been successfully launched in various industries such as banking, insurance, telecommunications and government.
