What Aware does

Aware, Inc. (NASDAQ: AWRE) is a Burlington, Massachusetts-based biometrics software company that has operated in identity verification since 1993, when it co-designed the FBI's WSQ fingerprint compression algorithm and became the first to commercialize it as a COTS SDK. The company serves federal, state, and local government agencies, law enforcement, financial institutions, and commercial enterprises through the Awareness Platform — an intelligent orchestration layer that supports multiple biometric modalities (face, fingerprint, iris, palmprint, voice, document) and integrates third-party biometric technologies from partners including ROC, Mitek, NEC, Intercede, and Airtera. Its product family spans the Awareness Platform, AwareABIS (automated biometric identification for government and law enforcement), AwareSDK (developer toolkit), AwareSolutions (custom hardware/software), and modular Intelligent Liveness, Intelligent Capture, and Intelligent Matching capabilities.

Aware generates revenue through perpetual software licenses, term licenses, annual maintenance contracts (the largest recurring component at $2.4M in Q3 2025 and $6.7M for the nine months ended September 2025), SaaS subscriptions (which doubled to $1.2M in Q3 2025 from $0.6M in Q3 2024), and professional services. The company sells primarily through direct enterprise field sales targeting federal and commercial accounts, supplemented by a partner and system-integrator ecosystem, with quote-based annual or multi-year contracts. Full-year 2025 revenue was $17.3M (essentially flat year-over-year), Q1 2026 revenue was $3.4M (down from $3.6M in Q1 2025), and the company held $22.5M in cash and marketable securities as of September 30, 2025.

Under CEO Ajay Amlani — co-founder of CLEAR and former White House Fellow and DHS Senior Policy Advisor — Aware has repositioned around biometric orchestration for AI-driven fraud defense, supported by a dense certification stack including FIDO Alliance Face Verification, FIDO2 Server, ISO/IEC 30107-3 (BixeLab), DHS RIVR Track 3, CEN/TS 18099, GDPR, CCPA, and the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework. The company's reported metrics — 80+ government agencies and hundreds of commercial organizations served globally, zero successful attacks in independent liveness evaluations, and a 33% YoY revenue spike in Q3 2025 — indicate a small but credentialed player executing a deliberate transition from a fragmented software portfolio to a unified platform business.

Name

Aware

Legal name

Aware, Inc.

Website

https://aware.com

Company type

Public

Founded year

1993

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

51–100 employees

Short description

Aware is a U.S.-based biometric identity software company serving government agencies, law enforcement, financial institutions, and commercial enterprises through its Awareness Platform, which orchestrates multi-modal biometrics and third-party identity technologies for verification, liveness, and fraud defense.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Biometric Identity Verification Software

NAICS

Software Publishers (5132)

SIC

Services-Prepackaged Software (7372)

akta.pro primary industry

Fraud Prevention & Identity Verification (IDV/KYC) (BPAMAEAI)

akta.pro secondary industries

Data, Evidence & Document Verification (IDV) for KYC (FSAMAMAN), Identity Verification, Proofing & KYC (IDV) (HDAEAJAI)

Keywords

• Biometric identity verification
• Biometric orchestration platform
• Liveness detection software
• Multi-modal biometrics
• Fingerprint recognition SDK

Headquarters

HQ city

Bedford

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Operations

Revenue model

1. Software Licenses: Both perpetual and term software licenses. Perpetual licenses allow perpetual use with annual maintenance fees, while term licenses are time-based subscriptions. Q3 2025 saw $1.0M expansion in perpetual licenses with an existing customer and $0.6M in new term license contracts.
2. Software Maintenance: Annual maintenance contracts providing updates, support, and technical assistance. Represents the largest recurring revenue component, totaling $2.4M in Q3 2025 and $6.7M for the nine months ended September 2025.
3. Software Subscriptions: Software-as-a-Service subscriptions for cloud-based biometric services. Q3 2025 subscriptions revenue was $1.2M, up from $0.6M in Q3 2024, demonstrating growth in the SaaS model transition.
4. Services and Other: Professional services including implementation, training, and customization services. Q3 2025 services revenue was $0.2M, down from $0.4M in the prior year period.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels8 records

Core offering

Aware develops and sells biometric software products and an orchestration platform (the Awareness Platform) for identity verification, liveness detection, and biometric matching across multiple modalities (face, fingerprint, iris, palmprint, voice, document). Its offerings are sold to government agencies, law enforcement, financial institutions, and commercial enterprises for use cases such as citizen ID, border security, KYC onboarding, and fraud prevention. Revenue comes from perpetual and term software licenses, software subscriptions (SaaS), maintenance contracts, and professional services.

Product overview

Aware offers a unified biometric orchestration platform (Awareness Platform) plus modular solutions. The core platform provides end-to-end biometric orchestration, identity verification, and decisioning workflows, while specialized modules include AwareABIS (for government/law enforcement), AwareSDK (for developers), and AwareSolutions (for custom hardware/software). Key intelligent modules include Intelligent Liveness (liveness/deepfake detection), Intelligent Capture (multi-modal capture), and Intelligent Matching (biometric identification). Supporting capabilities include Workflow Orchestration, Decision Orchestration, and WebEnroll (background verification). The platform supports face, fingerprint, iris, palmprint, voice, and document biometric modalities.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Awareness Platform™: Intelligent control plane for identity enabling biometric orchestration, identity verification, and decisioning workflows from a single platform.
• AwareABIS®
• AwareSDK™
• AwareSolutions™
• Intelligent Liveness
• Intelligent Capture
• Intelligent Matching
• AwareID Authenticator

Products and services

• Awareness Platform Comprehensive, turnkey end-to-end biometric platform providing intelligent, scalable architectures for biometric orchestration, identity verification, and decisioning workflows. Enables organizations to configure biometric workflows, orchestrate multiple ecosystem partners, evaluate technologies in production, and optimize identity decisions without vendor lock-in.
• AwareABIS Automated Biometric Identification System designed for government and law enforcement use, providing large-scale biometric identification and matching capabilities for criminal identification, background verification, and forensic applications.
• AwareSDK Software Development Kit designed for developers and system integrators to integrate Aware's biometric capabilities (capture, matching, liveness, compression) into their applications and systems.
• AwareSolutions Custom-fit hardware and software solutions for organizations requiring tailored biometric implementations, including specialized hardware integrations and bespoke deployments.
• Intelligent Liveness Biometric liveness detection solution that reduces deepfake, injection, and replay attacks by verifying that biometric samples come from a real, present user in real time. Combines passive and active detection methods with sub-second capture speeds and certified presentation attack detection performance.
• Intelligent Capture High-quality biometric capture solution across multiple modalities (face, fingerprint, iris, palmprint, voice, document) ensuring quality input for confident identity decisions downstream.
• Intelligent Matching Accurate and scalable biometric identification and matching solution providing fast decisions and precise identification across multiple biometric modalities at large scale.

Quantifiable outcome

• Approximately 10x lower False Non-Match Rate compared to previous generations
• +7 more outcomes

Named customers8 records

Segments5 records

Ideal customer profiles6 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration2 records

AI capability6 records

Feature8 records

Partnerships

Five partnerships are on record, tiered core and strategic.

• ROCcoreTechnology or Integration · 9 June 2026ROC was added as a biometric technology partner to the Awareness Platform in June 2026. ROC provides identity verification and biometric matching technologies that are integrated into Aware's biometric orchestration platform, enabling customers to configure workflows and orchestrate multiple technologies.
• MitekcoreTechnology or Integration · 9 June 2026Mitek was added as a biometric technology partner to the Awareness Platform in June 2026. Mitek provides identity verification and document verification technologies integrated into Aware's orchestration platform to protect organizations from emerging threats like deepfakes, synthetic identities, and injection attacks.
• NAFFIC (National Advanced Functional Fiber Innovation Center)strategicStrategic or Co-development Partner · 30 March 2026NAFFIC and Aware partnered to create the first China-Europe Digital Product Passport (DPP) for textiles, unveiled at a sustainability summit in Suzhou, China. The system traces the complete recycled polyester supply chain from post-consumer plastic bottles to finished garments, with each step recorded on a public blockchain and verified via QR code. The DPP helps brands comply with the EU's Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation.
• BixeLabcoreTechnology or Integration · 14 October 2025BixeLab, an NVLAP-accredited biometric testing laboratory, conducted independent testing and certification for Aware's face verification and liveness detection technologies. BixeLab is one of only three labs globally accredited for testing biometric performance and the first accredited under NIST NVLAP for biometric bias testing.
• FIDO AlliancecoreTechnology or Integration · 14 October 2025FIDO Alliance is an industry association that sets standards for authentication and identity verification. Aware achieved FIDO Alliance Face Verification Certification following a decade of collaboration including previous certifications in three FIDO UAF categories and NIST FATE testing.

Scale indicators12 records

Recent moves2 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Direct peers

• iProov: iProov is a biometric liveness and face verification vendor serving governments, financial services, and travel sectors. Highly comparable to Aware's Intelligent Liveness and Face solutions, with overlapping customer verticals (U.S. government, banks, travel/aviation) and liveness-first positioning.
• Veriff: Veriff provides identity verification, KYC, and biometric authentication to financial services and other regulated industries. Directly comparable to Aware on biometric-based KYC, fraud prevention, and onboarding use cases, targeting the same enterprise and financial-services buyers.
• Incode Technologies: Incode offers an end-to-end identity verification and biometric authentication platform with face, document, and liveness capabilities. Comparable to Aware's Awareness Platform across government, financial services, and commercial enterprise deployments, including orchestration of multiple biometric modalities.
• Oosto (formerly Anyvision): Oosto provides face recognition and video analytics-based biometric solutions for security, retail, and public-sector use cases. Aware's CRO Brian Krause led North American expansion of Anyvision, and Oosto competes directly with Aware on face biometrics, liveness, and identity verification.
• Mitek Systems: Mitek is a digital identity verification and mobile capture/identity document verification provider, and is now an Aware technology partner integrated into the Awareness Platform. Comparable on mobile capture, document verification, and biometric onboarding workflows that intersect with Aware's offerings.
• Daon: Daon provides biometric identity verification and authentication platforms (IdentityX) used by financial services, government, and travel verticals. Comparable to Aware on multi-modal biometric orchestration, KYC, and customer onboarding, including face, voice, and document verification.

Broad incumbents

• IDEMIA: IDEMIA is a global leader in biometric and identity solutions serving governments, law enforcement, and commercial enterprises with face, fingerprint, and iris modalities. Comparable as a broad incumbent that sells many of the same components (ABIS, biometric SDKs, document verification) that Aware orchestrates.
• Onfido: Onfido is an AI-based identity verification and biometrics provider, acquired by Entrust, serving banks, fintechs, and other regulated enterprises globally. Overlaps with Aware's KYC, biometric verification, and liveness offerings in the financial services customer segment.
• NEC (Biometric Solutions): NEC provides large-scale biometric identification and face recognition solutions, used by governments and law enforcement worldwide. Listed as an Aware ecosystem partner (NEC integrates via the Awareness Platform), and directly comparable on government-scale biometric matching and identification.
• Jumio: Jumio is an established identity verification and KYC platform using AI, document verification, and biometrics for digital onboarding and fraud prevention. Comparable to Aware on financial-services onboarding, KYC, and identity verification workflows, though broader and more horizontally integrated.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/AwareBiometrics
• YouTubeyoutube.com/@AwareBiometrics
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/aware-inc.

Compliance8 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles7 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A2 records

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Aware