Ping Identity to Acquire Keyless, Expanding Privacy-Preserving Biometric Capabilities

Ping Identity has announced a definitive agreement to acquire London-based Keyless, a developer of privacy-preserving biometric authentication technologies. The deal, disclosed on October 30, 2025, is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Financial terms were not made public.

Keyless specializes in “Zero-Knowledge Biometrics,” a system that uses secure multi-party computation to verify a user’s face and device without storing reconstructable biometric data. The company’s approach is designed to enable multi-factor authentication in a single glance while keeping biometric templates unrecoverable both on the device and in the cloud. Keyless cites performance targets of sub-300 milliseconds for authentication and compliance readiness for privacy regimes including GDPR and CCPA.

The company’s emphasis on certification rigor has positioned it as a recognized vendor in privacy-first authentication. It has achieved both FIDO Biometrics and FIDO2 certifications and was the first vendor to hold both credentials concurrently. Earlier in 2025, Keyless ranked eleventh among more than 150 vendors in the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Face Recognition Vendor Test 1:N evaluation, underscoring its technical maturity in liveness detection and biometric matching. The company also secured an additional two million dollars in funding in January, bringing its total to roughly ten million dollars over 18 months, with plans to expand across North America.

Ping says it will integrate Keyless directly into the Ping Identity Platform to strengthen defenses against account takeover and AI-driven impersonation while maintaining low friction for users. The company describes the move as an extension of its “One Platform” vision across customer identity, workforce, and B2B use cases. Once incorporated, Keyless technology is expected to deliver passwordless access in shared-terminal and frontline worker environments.

The acquisition builds on Ping’s established strategy of combining organic platform growth with targeted acquisitions. In 2021, Ping acquired behavioral-fraud specialist SecuredTouch to bolster its risk and fraud analytics capabilities. Earlier this year, it added just-in-time privileged access through the acquisition of Procyon. Integrating Keyless adds a standards-based biometric factor that can operate across PingOne orchestration services and other platform components. The company says this will enable organizations to deploy biometrics that are both privacy-preserving and device-agnostic.

The device independence of Keyless’s solution is expected to simplify enterprise deployments across mixed device fleets, a persistent challenge in large organizations adopting biometric authentication. Its zero-knowledge design also aims to help enterprises maintain stronger compliance positions under European and global privacy standards. The inclusion of FIDO and ETSI certifications offers interoperability assurances that are often prerequisites for enterprise procurement and regulatory acceptance.

Ping is framing the acquisition as part of a broader industry response to the growing threat of deepfakes and other synthetic media attacks that target biometric systems. By combining Keyless’s privacy-first biometrics with Ping’s orchestration and policy tools, the companies aim to enable identity verification processes that remain resilient against AI-enabled impersonation.

Keyless and Ping have an established relationship dating back to 2023, when Keyless integrated its biometric multi-factor authentication with the PingOne DaVinci orchestration framework. That collaboration likely smoothed the path for the current acquisition and subsequent platform integration. Ping itself has operated under Thoma Bravo ownership since 2022, during which time it has accelerated product development and acquisition activity focused on identity security and fraud mitigation.

Andre Durand, Ping Identity’s chief executive officer, said the combination aims to “make privacy-preserving authentication as simple as a glance.” Andrea Carmignani, co-founder and chief executive of Keyless, described the acquisition as an opportunity to “embed trust throughout the identity journey.”

Neither company disclosed an expected closing date. Market observers anticipate roadmap updates to PingOne and other platform SDKs once the transaction is finalized. Packaging and licensing details will also determine how quickly Keyless’s technology becomes available to Ping’s existing customers. Enterprises in regulated industries are expected to monitor developments closely, particularly around FIDO and eIDAS alignment for biometric multi-factor authentication.

This acquisition reinforces Ping Identity’s intent to consolidate privacy-centric and AI-resilient identity tools within its platform portfolio, signaling a continued emphasis on secure, standards-based authentication ecosystems.

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By Cass Kennedy