CertifID has acquired Closinglock, bringing two software vendors that together serve more than 3,000 U.S. title companies under one owner and consolidating a set of tools title agents have until now bought from competing suppliers.
The companies announced the deal on Oct. 1, 2026 in a joint release issued through Business Wire. Terms were not disclosed. Both firms are venture-backed Austin, Texas companies, and both sell into the same customer β the title agent sitting between a buyer’s money and a seller’s deed.
Tyler Adams, CertifID’s chief executive and co-founder, will lead the combined company. Andy White, Closinglock’s chief executive and co-founder, becomes chief strategy officer.
It is CertifID’s second acquisition in four months. The company bought CloseSimple, a closing communication and automation platform, in June 2026.
What the combined company controls
The two businesses together employ roughly 220 people and serve more than 3,000 title companies and 35,000 title professionals across the United States, according to the announcement.
Their reach into the money itself is the more consequential number. CertifID says it protected 1.55 million real estate transactions in 2025 and has recovered $145 million in stolen funds through its fraud recovery service. Closinglock says it has protected more than $900 billion across more than 2 million transactions since it was founded. Combined, the companies say they have moved more than $7 billion in real estate payments and expect to protect 2.5 million transactions during 2026.
The capabilities are adjacent rather than overlapping. CertifID’s core product verifies identities and validates wire instructions before funds move, and it backs every wire it protects with up to $5 million in direct insurance coverage. Closinglock’s platform handles escrow management and the mechanics of secure payments. The release frames the combination as “verified once, trusted throughout” β the pitch being that a participant confirmed at the start of a transaction does not need to be re-confirmed at every subsequent step.
Between them the companies have raised more than $130 million: $80 million for CertifID, from investors including Arthur Ventures and Centana Growth Partners, and $50 million for Closinglock, from Sageview Capital, Headline and Live Oak Ventures.
Why title agents keep buying this software
The demand driver is fraud, and it is getting worse rather than better. Citing FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center data, the companies said real estate fraud losses grew more than twice as fast as overall reported cybercrime losses last year, and that business email compromise scams β the category that captures most wire fraud attempts at closing β topped $3 billion in losses.
Title professionals’ own accounts match that. A spring 2026 survey of 245 title professionals released by the American Land Title Association, which CertifID sponsored, found 59% of firms reported at least one seller impersonation attempt in 2025, more than double the 28% recorded in 2024. Among affected firms that disclosed costs, half reported average losses above $100,000.
“Title companies are being asked to protect more, move faster and deliver a better experience at a time when the risks have never been greater,” Adams said in the release. “The challenges facing the real estate industry are real, persistent, and bigger than any one company or product can solve alone.”
White framed the deal as a question of reach. “We built Closinglock to protect every person and every dollar in real estate, and this gives us the opportunity to do that at a much greater scale,” he said. “Separately, our companies have solved some of the hardest problems in real estate fraud and made groundbreaking advancements in how real estate is paid for, and these capabilities belong together.”
No forced migration β for now
Both platforms stay live. The companies said customers can keep using the CertifID and Closinglock products and integrations they use today, and that CertifID will continue investing in an open ecosystem spanning title production systems, title underwriters and third-party platforms.
Adams tied that commitment to the state of the market. “With continued headwinds in the real estate market, our responsibility is to deliver more protection and value for our customers without asking them to change platforms or restructure workflows,” he said.
That is a meaningful promise in a sector where vendor consolidation often ends in a migration notice. It is also, on our reading, a statement of intent rather than a commitment with a date attached: maintaining two platforms that overlap on payments is expensive, and the release sets no term for how long both will be supported.
CertifID’s own origin is a reminder of how small the losses can be and still change a business. Co-founders Tom Cronkright and Lawrence Duthler built the first version after their Grand Rapids, Michigan title company lost $180,000 to wire fraud in 2015. A decade later the company that grew out of that loss has become the buyer rather than the target in its category. The trade-off for title agents, on our reading, is fewer suppliers to play against one another on price.
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