Forbes says Clear CEO Caryn Seidman Becker is now a billionaire

Why it matters

Clear is a founder turnaround success story, but its next growth phase depends on moving sensitive biometric identity checks from airports into healthcare and government.

Caryn Seidman Becker turned a $6 million bankruptcy purchase into a public biometric identity company, and Forbes now estimates her 14.5% stake in Clear is worth $1.1 billion.

That is the cleanest version of the Clear story. The more useful version is what Becker does next. Clear, the New York City-based biometric identity company best known for airport security checkpoints, reported $900 million in 2025 revenue and $168 million in net income, according to Forbes. But its core airport membership business is showing signs of maturity: Forbes reports active airport memberships grew 6% in 2025.

Seidman Becker, 53, bought Clear's assets during the financial crisis, including 190,000 people's fingerprints, after the earlier business went bankrupt. Clear went public in 2021 and now operates at 60 U.S. airports, where members pay $209 a year to verify their identity with face scans before moving to baggage screening.

"I think people continually underestimate how hard traveling is and how much people want help in travel," Seidman Becker told Forbes.

The airport business still works, but it has limits

Clear's airport product is simple: sell speed and certainty to people who fly enough to value both. Forbes says Clear had 8.2 million members in 2025, and that Clear paid partner airports $128 million that year. Seidman Becker described that payment stream to Forbes as "100% profit" for the airports.

The constraint is that Clear's best-known product depends on friction in a government-run process. Justin Oberman, CEO of aviation startup Airspace Data and a former participant in the TSA's post-9/11 setup, put it bluntly to Forbes: "A totally efficient government-run process at the checkpoint would hurt Clear's business." He added: "Fundamentally all you're getting is the ability to cut the line."

Clear also has customer concentration risk. Forbes reports that American Express Platinum cardholders get Clear for free, and analysts estimate just under half of Clear members come through AmEx. Clear signed a multiyear extension with American Express this spring, according to Forbes, but the terms were not disclosed.

That explains why Seidman Becker is trying to make Clear less like an airport perk and more like an identity layer. "We want to go from 12 times a year to 12 times a day," she told Forbes.

The bigger bet is healthcare identity

Clear already extends beyond airports. Forbes reports that people can use Clear at Yankee Stadium and eight other sports venues, and for identity checks with Docusign, LinkedIn, Uber and Home Depot rentals. Seidman Becker also sits on Home Depot's board.

Healthcare is the bigger test. Forbes reports that major hospital groups in Georgia, New York, New Jersey and Louisiana have integrated Clear for uses including doctor-office check-in, surgery, chemotherapy identity confirmation and MyChart password recovery.

Hackensack Meridian, which Forbes says owns 18 hospitals, uses Clear for MyChart password recovery. Wellstar, one of Georgia's largest health systems, has embedded Clear into check-in kiosks across 264 departments and doctor offices, according to Forbes. The system serves 1.3 million people, and Forbes reports the rollout has saved thousands of hours of front-desk work and helped eliminate hundreds of duplicate health records.

The government channel is opening too. Forbes says Clear landed a $6 million Medicare contract in December so new enrollees can sign into accounts with a selfie instead of a password.

The open question is how much of this becomes material revenue. Forbes says Clear's non-airport enterprise figures are still too small to break out separately, even as total enrollments across airport and enterprise products reached 41 million in 2025, up 31% year over year. Enterprise bookings grew fivefold in 2025, according to Forbes, but bookings are not the same as recognized revenue.

Biometrics make the upside and the scrutiny inseparable

Seidman Becker's wager is that identity verification is not a travel niche but a broader infrastructure problem. Forbes cites Grand View Research estimating the identity verification market could generate $34 billion in revenue by 2030.

That market comes with a different trust burden than airport line management. Clear's cameras scan facial features such as jawbone contour, eye-socket depth and lip curvature, according to Forbes. In healthcare and government services, the same technology touches more sensitive moments: medical visits, account recovery and public benefits access.

Forbes reports that Clear does not sell data. What remains less clear from the Forbes account are the detailed safeguards around biometric retention, audits and healthcare data handling. Those questions matter more as Clear moves from helping frequent fliers skip an ID line to asking patients, workers and Medicare users to let a private company verify who they are.

For Seidman Becker, the turnaround is already extraordinary. The next chapter is harder: proving Clear can become everyday identity infrastructure without asking users, hospitals and governments to accept biometric convenience on faith.