Transcend Raises $40M in Series B Funding to Revolutionize Enterprise Privacy
Transcend has announced a significant milestone, securing $40M in Series B funding. This round was led by new investor StepStone Group, with participation from HighlandX and existing investors Accel, Index Ventures, 01 Advisors (01A), Script Capital, and South Park Commons. This latest funding round brings Transcend’s total funding to nearly $90M.
A New Chapter in Privacy Innovation
Since its Series A, Transcend has evolved from offering a “virtual kill-switch for consumers to delete data” to becoming a comprehensive Privacy and AI Governance suite. The platform now includes 12 products designed to transform how enterprises understand and manage personal data, automate privacy tasks, assess risks, and oversee AI systems.
The Challenge of Legacy Privacy Platforms
Many companies still rely on legacy privacy platforms built on manual workflows: interviewing data owners, data entry, and assigning operational work across teams. These methods are inefficient and outdated. Transcend focuses on encoding privacy controls directly into business systems, addressing the entire privacy lifecycle of personal data. This includes data discovery and classification, consent and preference management, and automating operational workflows, such as responding to data deletion and access requests.
Meeting Modern Privacy Needs
Addressing today’s privacy challenges with legacy platforms is like throwing a glass of water at a house on fire—it’s hopeless. As the world marks the sixth anniversary of GDPR and faces new regulations like the EU AI Act and a draft U.S. federal privacy law, privacy remains a fundamentally unsolved problem within companies. Most enterprises lack a clear view of their data and effective privacy controls integrated directly into their systems.
A New Approach to Privacy and AI Governance
New AI use cases are pushing privacy problems right up to the boardroom door. Legacy solutions relying on heavily operational processes cannot meet this moment. Privacy issues must be addressed at the data system level, with infrastructure that orchestrates personal data directly across all business systems. This is the approach Transcend has taken since its inception, and this latest fundraise will help meet the demand for a transition to modern privacy technology.
Support from Leading Investors
Transcend’s Series B round is led by StepStone Group. John Avirett, Partner at StepStone Group, said:
“Transcend takes a radically different approach to solving modern data privacy problems by tackling it at the code level. They are moving companies with complex data requirements off inefficient legacy platforms and onto their next-generation platform—what an incredible signal of future success.”
Proven Success in the Market
Transcend’s sales data shows that when placed head-to-head against the market’s legacy incumbent solution, Transcend wins in nearly 9 out of 10 cases. Companies find that Transcend’s technical platform reduces risk, enables business innovation grounded in compliant data usage, drives operational efficiencies, and helps build trust with their customers through responsible data practices.
Customer Success Stories
Chad Rosenthal, AGC, Privacy & Digital Platforms at LG Electronics, shared his experience:
“Transcend implementation has resulted in significantly greater compliance. Privacy requests have increased substantially and response time has decreased by 75%. Transcend’s Premier support offering is a spectacular value and the individuals I have worked with are highly knowledgeable. ‘Transcend’ has become part of the language of the enterprise. It is understood that applications must be connected to Transcend, particularly remarkable since we are a global company.”
The Growing Data Privacy Market
The global data privacy software market is growing at a 40% CAGR and will be valued at $30B by 2030. This growth is driven by increased public interest in data privacy and the widespread adoption of AI across industries, adding complexity to how companies use and protect data. Without appropriate safeguards, AI tools can expose companies to confidentiality, data privacy, consumer safety, brand trustworthiness, and intellectual property risks.
Transcend’s Role in AI Adoption
Transcend’s platform is uniquely positioned to support AI adoption within enterprises. Effective data mapping and governance are fundamental to the responsible adoption of AI technology. The recently approved EU AI Act requires AI providers and deployers to adopt strict data governance practices, publish transparency notices describing their data management procedures, and develop detailed technical documentation on data collection, cleaning, and provenance practices. Transcend streamlines and automates all these processes, and more.
Gratitude to Customers
Transcend extends gratitude to its customers for choosing them as their technical privacy partner. From Fortune 500s like LG Electronics to category leaders like Rippling, Plaid, and Hims & Hers, the company is inspired by stories of success on reduced risk, more efficient privacy operations, and increased business agility through great privacy practices.
At the end of the day, this is about something bigger. By fixing privacy for the enterprise, Transcend is helping restore a reality where ordinary people are not subject to extraordinary surveillance. So far, Transcend has delivered actionable data rights to over 1.2 billion people globally. With this raise, they aim to reach the next billion.
