Generative AI has supercharged the legal tech industry in recent years, and one startup building in the space just raised $26 million in new funding to help lawyers draft contracts with artificial intelligence.
The startup Robin AI, recently closed its Series B funding round, which Singapore investment company Temasek led. VC firms QuantumLight, Plural, and AFG Partners also participated in the round.
Headquartered in London, Robin uses Anthropic’s latest large language model, Claude 2.1, and offers an “AI co-pilot” to help lawyers draft and revise contracts. The startup has three AI-based tools: a draft function that can create a contract in minutes, a review tool to help lawyers edit and negotiate documents, and an advanced query to help lawyers search for important data within their contracts.
The startup raised a $10.5 million Series A in January 2023 and a $2.5 million seed round in 2021. Additional Robin investors include SoftBank, Google, and Episode 1.
Legal tech has long been a hot area within the VC market, as lawyers are hungry for tools that can help them be more efficient in researching cases, annotating documents, writing contracts, and billing hours.
AI, however, can be challenging for lawyers to use correctly. Some have been burned by using ChatGPT, while others question whether the technology puts sensitive client data at risk.
Since Robin was founded in 2019, before the recent AI craze, the startup has gained lawyers’ trust, explained CEO and founder Richard Robinson, an attorney himself.
“Investors feel confident in our ability to build AI products that are truly transformative because we’ve already been doing it for years,” he told Business Insider.
Robinson added that “the way the legal industry works is going to change in the next three to five years,” and the funding puts the startup in a strong position to win in what’s become a crowded marketplace for AI in legal tech.
Although funding for legal tech startups fell in 2023, according to Crunchbase, a handful of startups have raised new rounds of cash. Responsiv, which raised $3 million last fall, is also building an “AI co-pilot,” specifically for in-house attorneys, while personal-injury firm startup EvenUp and class-action lawsuit startup Darrow also completed funding rounds.
Robinson said in 2024 Robin will focus on hiring AI talent in an increasingly competitive market and grow in Asia, with plans to open an office in Singapore.
“We have a huge opportunity in front of us, and now is the time to invest to capture this opportunity,” he said.
Check out the eight-slide pitch deck Robin used to raise its $26 million Series B funding round.
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