About ToothPic
A scientific discovery, turned into proof.
ToothPic is a deep-tech cybersecurity company founded by four professors and researchers with years of experience in camera identification, security and forensic analysis. We invented, designed, developed and patented the only way to identify a physical smartphone from the silicon of its camera sensor — the signal fraud teams have never had.
Our mission
Make possession provable — for every person, on every phone.
We turn the camera sensor already inside billions of smartphones into an unclonable hardware key, so banks, payment providers and enterprises can prove which physical device — and therefore which person — is really there. No tokens to ship, no secrets to store, no friction for the user.
Our vision
A digital world where trust is anchored in physics, not in data.
As AI learns to fake every voice, face and credential, identity must move down the stack — from what can be copied to what cannot. We want hardware-grade, privacy-preserving authentication to become as universal and invisible as the smartphone itself, made in Europe and open to everyone.
What makes ToothPic different
Not another software signal.
Physics, not data
Behavioural biometrics, device fingerprinting and liveness score copyable signals. ToothPic proves possession of a specific piece of silicon.
Nothing stored
Unlike secure-enclave keys, soft tokens or synced passkeys, the key exists only for the instant of signing — there is no secret to steal, sync or clone.
Hardware already deployed
Hardware-token security without shipping hardware: it runs on the phones your customers already own, and survives resets and reinstalls.
Standards & privacy by design
FIDO2-certified signatures into your existing IdP; no biometric or personal data ever leaves the device. Built and patented in the EU.
Who we are
An official spin-off of Politecnico di Torino.
Politecnico di Torino is a major engineering school in Italy and Europe. ToothPic is incubated at I3P, the university incubator, and in 2018 received a seed from VV3TT, an Italian venture fund dedicated to technology transfer from public research.
Our technology recognises the unique pattern of invisible imperfections that characterise smartphone cameras to protect the cryptographic keys used for user authentication, digital signature and blockchain applications — with no additional hardware. It is protected by four patent families and has won prizes including StartCup and PNI in Italy and, twice, the Seal of Excellence issued by the European Commission.
Milestones
From the lab to production.
Seed round
Spin-off of Politecnico di Torino, seed from VV3TT; incubated at I3P.
€810K funding round
Club degli Investitori and Vertis SGR confirm ToothPic as an emerging cybersecurity player.
IEEE Best Paper Award
IEEE Computer Society award for “ToothPic: Camera-Based Image Retrieval on Large Scales”.
Gartner Representative Vendor
Market Guide for User Authentication — again in 2025.
Patents across six major markets
Europe, Italy, USA, Japan, China and Israel — plus South Korea in 2026.
Banks, payments and caller verification
Hardware-anchored trust for the AI era, from device binding to deepfake-proof calls.
Our investors
Backed by people who turn research into products.
ToothPic raised €1.9M between 2018 and 2026. Our investors helped us transform a brilliant scientific discovery into a unique product that contributes to solving the problem of secure user authentication.
Vertis Venture 3 Tech Transfer (VV3TT)
Venture capital fund dedicated to technology transfer from public research — seed investor in 2018.
Club degli Investitori
Italy’s leading business-angel network — co-investor in the 2021 round.
I3P — Politecnico di Torino
University incubator, recognised by UBI Global as the best public incubator worldwide.
Want to work with us?
Partnerships, pilots, investors or talent — we would love to hear from you.