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Husayn Kassai

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The profile

Co-founder and former CEO of Onfido, the identity-verification company Blueacorn made its primary PPP identity check in April 2021, per the House report; Onfido was acquired by Entrust in 2024.

Identity and role

Husayn Kassai co-founded Onfido in 2012 and was its CEO from the start until he stepped back in late 2020. He is based in London. As of 2025–2026 his active venture is ollo, an enterprise "agentic AI" startup with offices in London and Brooklyn; his own bio there describes him as "ex-CEO/Co-Founder of Onfido — identity verification, $650M exit." Between Onfido and ollo he founded Quench.ai, an AI learning-coach startup that raised a $5 million pre-seed, and the relationship between Quench.ai and ollo is not cleanly documented .

Biography

Kassai's Oxford background (Keble College, Oxford Entrepreneurs) and early career are cited to an Oxford interview and a conference bio; we do not have copies.

Onfido was founded in 2012 by Oxford students Kassai, Eamon Jubbawy and Ruhul Amin (Oxford news and Sifted). Oxford's 2024 note describes the Oxford Seed Fund's early investment and the sale's return on it. His Forbes 30 Under 30 and Financial Times listings are cited to a conference bio; we do not have a copy.

He stepped down as CEO in November 2020, when Onfido brought in Mike Tuchen as CEO ahead of a planned IPO (Business Wire and TechCrunch); Kassai then moved into new ventures.

The company and its PPP role

Onfido sold remote identity verification: document-authenticity checks paired with facial-similarity, or "selfie," matching, run on computer vision and machine learning.

Its PPP appearance is in the Blueacorn record, documented in the House Select Subcommittee's December 2022 staff report (we have a copy of the full report), which found that Blueacorn relied on four off-the-shelf products — Plaid, GIACT, Onfido, and IDology — and that beginning in early April 2021 Blueacorn began using Onfido as its primary method of identity verification instead of IDology's more rigorous knowledge-based questions or human review. After the switch, applicants were sent to IDology only if they failed Onfido or were later flagged.

The subcommittee placed the switch under a heading about Blueacorn's automated review being weakened to push approval rates higher, a congressional committee's characterization of how Blueacorn used the tool. It is not a finding against Onfido, and the report does not allege Onfido did anything wrong. No Onfido statement about the Blueacorn relationship or PPP has been located.

Their own relief

A ProPublica PPP database search for "Onfido" (cited) returns no loans under that name.

Onfido's significant litigation was an Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act class action, Sosa v. Onfido, Inc., in the Northern District of Illinois, brought by OfferUp users whose selfies and IDs Onfido matched (settlement site and Biometric Update, the Seventh Circuit's August 2021 arbitration ruling is cited to Justia, whose capture is a stub). The case settled for $28.5 million with Onfido denying wrongdoing .

Where they are now (2025–2026)

Onfido is now Entrust's identity business. Entrust announced the acquisition in February 2024 and completed it on April 9, 2024, with press reporting a price of about $650 million (TechCrunch and Oxford news); Entrust's completion release (we do not have a copy) gave Onfido's revenue, headcount and customer figures.

Kassai runs ollo (company page). Sifted (we have a copy) traced his post-Onfido ventures from a creator-economy startup, Newmn Ltd, into his AI ventures and reported that co-founder Eamon Jubbawy went on to co-found Sequence; his advisory and angel roles are not documented in the sources we have.

Sources held in this archive

Original source documents and archived captures

Sources

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