D-ID (its name stands for “de-identification”) was founded last year by CEO Gil Perry, COO Sella Blondheim, and CTO Eliran Kuta. Perry and Blondheim met when both were in the Israeli Special Forces about a decade ago, while Kuta served in the Israeli Intelligence Corps. At that time, photo-sharing on social media was relatively new, but they already needed to be mindful of face recognition technology.
“We couldn’t share our photos and profiles over the web because of sensitive positions. Even after we finished our service, we couldn’t share our photos when we traveled in South America,” Perry says. “We felt bad because we are very social and everyone was sharing photos, but we couldn’t.”
Perry and Blondheim realized that people in the security industry were also forbidden from sharing photos online. They started brainstorming ideas to protect pictures from face recognition tech and came up with a basic algorithm. After an interlude of a few years, during which each of them worked on separate startups, they regrouped, added Kuta to their team, and launched D-ID.
