Open source password management platform Bitwarden has made its first notable acquisition, launching Passwordless.dev, a new Sweden-based startup focused on helping developers integrate passwordless authentication technology into their software.
The news comes shortly after 1Password and LastPass rival Bitwarden announced its first outside funding since its founding in 2015, securing $100 million from PSG and Battery Ventures. The company said at the time that it had raised a previously undisclosed Series A round in 2019.
Password problem
Similar to other password management services, Bitwarden is designed to allow individuals and organizations to automatically generate hard-to-guess passwords and store them all in a secure repository. It’s about helping people avoid reusing the same predictable password across all their online services. Bitwarden’s key selling point, however, is that it’s open source – or at least the source is available, which means it promises complete transparency into its codebase, as well as allowing the community to contribute and develop new features.
Now, Bitwarden is looking to capitalize on a growing trend in the online security sphere that seeks to relegate passwords to the history books — hacked passwords, after all, are responsible for most business security breaches.
Indeed, there has been a concerted push towards passwordless authentication on the technology front. Last year, Apple, Google and Microsoft partnered to support a new password-free login standard called WebAuthn, and separately, Apple introduced a new feature called Passkey that allows people to use their Apple devices to access online services without a password. .
Elsewhere, passwordless focused startups like Hyper, Magic and Stitch have attracted VC dollars to bolster their respective efforts.
Bitwarden, on the other hand, already offers some support for passwordless authentication, such as biometric logins for Bitwarden’s own apps, as well as physical two-factor authentication (2FA) security keys such as UBKey. But by bringing Passwordless.dev under its wing, Bitwarden wants to make it easier for developers to bake native biometric login smarts into their software while allowing enterprises to update existing password-based applications.
In the year Founded in 2020 from Sweden, Passwordless.dev has been flying mostly under the radar since its inception. But the company also offers APIs built on WebAuthn, a web standard developed by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to support secure password logins. Passwordless.dev basically makes it easy for developers to bring WebAuthn into their software with just a few lines of code, reducing the cost and complexity of introducing passwordless authentication into their software.
Passwordless.dev enables companies to implement password-free authentication in minutes
Starting today, Bitwarden is launching a new beta service called Passwordless.dev that allows any third-party developer to integrate biometric login technologies such as Touch ID, Face ID, and Windows Hello into their applications.
“This saves weeks of coding on do-it-yourself passcode implementations,” Bitwarden CEO Michael Crandell explained to TechCrunch in an email. Bitwarden Passwordless.dev helps these apps quickly add WebAuthn and passwordless authentication features.
Passwordless.dev by Bitwarden will be free during an initial beta period of Q1 2023, after which the company says it will offer paid plans covering certain usage levels and features.
While Bitwarden did not disclose how much it paid the startup or how many employees it is hiring as part of the deal, it confirmed that Passwordless.dev has not raised any outside funding in its two-plus years of existence. It probably won’t break the bank for the purchase.
Bitwarden also confirmed to TechCrunch that Passwordless.dev will continue to be offered to developers separately from other Bitwarden products.
