Latest news with #Legora
Business Insider
26-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Legaltech startups have raised over $1 billion this year. Here are 10 companies to watch.
Legaltech startups are thriving, raising over $1 billion in funding this year. These companies leverage AI to streamline legal work, attracting significant investor interest. Despite a slowing funding market, AI-driven legaltech firms continue to secure investments. Law is having its ChatGPT moment. In recent years, a torrent of startups has emerged that use artificial intelligence to strip the drudgery from legal work. In a slowing funding market, these companies are cashing in on the AI hype. Funding to companies in the legal and legaltech industries has crossed $1 billion so far this year, according to Crunchbase data and Business Insider's estimate based on recent financings. This list highlights a select few legaltech startups that raised capital in 2025, sorted from most to least total funding. Harvey Founded: 2022 Total funding: More than $500 million The hype: In a crowded category, Harvey stands in a league of its own. Lawyers at eight of the 10 highest-grossing US law firms use the platform, sending its annual recurring revenue to more than $70 million in April. Harvey's rise hasn't gone unnoticed. "Lots of people flock to an opportunity once it's clear," said Sarah Guo, a managing partner at Conviction and Harvey investor, "but Harvey is 10X the next biggest competitor — it has breakthrough momentum." The dish: Harvey's success is fueling a growing list of competitors, and some of them look pretty similar under the hood. The company is betting that it can edge out rivals by molding the product to the client. If customization is the moat, the question becomes: how does it scale? Luminance Founded: 2015 Total funding: $165 million The hype: Luminance is seeing soaring demand for its legal contract review and drafting platform. The British-born legaltech said its core corporate product offering has grown annual recurring revenue 6x in the past two years. Driven by the company's revenue growth, investors put in another $75 million in Series C funding in February. The dish: While most legaltech startups build on general-purpose models from OpenAI, Google, or Meta, Luminance uses a patchwork of models, including a number of proprietary models designed in-house, to handle different legal tasks as required. Training a state-of-the-art model can provide a competitive edge, but it also demands a tank of capital. Legora Founded: 2023 Total funding: $120 million The hype: Legora is taking on Harvey with its solution to help bogged-down lawyers speed up legal research and drafting, and gaining ground. In two years, it's added 250 clients in 20 markets, including big-league law firms like Cleary Gottlieb, Goodwin, Bird & Bird, and Mannheimer Swartling. To fuel its growth, General Catalyst and Iconiq led an $80 million round for Legora in May, valuing the company at $675 million. The dish: In a crowded market, Legora will need to find ways to stand apart from competitors. The company is betting that the strength of its product and its ability to tightly tailor the tool to firms will continue to attract major names. Trouble is, Harvey's making the same pitch. Eudia Founded: 2023 Total funding: $105 million The hype: Eudia's custom agents promise to shrink months of legal grunt work down to days, or even minutes. Rather than chasing law firms, Eudia is laser-focused on in-house legal teams, betting that enterprises will adopt technology more readily than firms afraid of software nibbling at their bottom line. The company exited stealth in January with $105 million in funding. The dish: Since Eudia's launch, investors have showered founder Omar Haroun with cash, eager to get in on what they hope will be his next breakout. He sold his last startup, Text IQ, to legal and compliance heavyweight Relativity in 2021. But pedigree isn't performance, and it remains to be seen whether Haroun and Eudia can deliver. Supio Founded: 2021 Total funding: $91 million The hype: Rajeev Dham, a partner at Sapphire Ventures and Supio investor, says the company is building the Cursor for plaintiff law firms. The platform parses medical records, police reports, and expert opinions, then lets lawyers build medical chronologies, draft briefs, and search their files using a chatbot. Fresh off a $60 million round, Supio has quadrupled its revenue run rate and size of its customer base over the past year. The dish: EvenUp may be three years ahead of Supio in the market, but Dham argues that's exactly why Supio has the upper hand. It engineered its entire platform around artificial intelligence from day one. Still, Supio has to contend with a competitor with over a thousand personal injury law firm customers and more than twice the funding. Eve Founded: 2020 Total funding: $61 million The hype: Eve helps plaintiff firms automate away tedious tasks and resolve cases faster. The company added more than 200 law firm customers, from personal injury to employment law, over the last year. Early investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and Menlo Ventures seem pleased with its progress; Eve raised $47 million in a January Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz. The dish: Plaintiff lawyers, especially solo and small shops, are slow to adopt new tech unless it's proven, dead simple, and affordable. Eve may find its early adopters are tech-forward anomalies, not the norm. Spellbook Founded: 2018 Total funding: More than $30 million The hype: Zach Posner, managing director of The Legal Tech Fund and a Spellbook investor, says growth is ripping over at Spellbook, a contract drafting and review tool. Spellbook's annual contract value, which measures the average annual revenue it generates from a single customer contract, has risen for three straight years. It suggests lawyers see real value and are scaling up. The dish: This list highlights startups that have raised money so far this year. Spellbook's last round closed over a year ago, but we're including it anyway. The word on the street is that Spellbook is in talks to raise a Series B round. A person close to the company said the terms of the offering are still being negotiated. Paxton Founded: 2023 Total funding: $28 million The hype: While other legaltech startups court Big Law, Paxton is betting on the middle. Its platform targets small and midsize firms — an overlooked segment that helped drive a 14x jump in monthly recurring revenue last year, according to a company blog. The dish: Even though Paxton is targeting a different segment of the market, it still faces the challenge of convincing law firms to switch from their established systems. Law firms are notoriously risk-averse, and many will stick with what they know. Theo Ai Marveri Founded: 2023 Total funding: $3.5 million The hype: Due diligence is the bane of a young attorney's profession. To help, Marveri 's platform sucks up all of a corporation's documents and lets users analyze and query their contents. Marveri, which counts Elon Musk's lawyer Alex Spiro as an advisor, emerged from stealth in May with $3.5 million in funding. Masha Bucher's Day One Ventures, Bessemer, and a syndicate of early users participated in the deal. The dish: Marveri is going toe to toe with a Goliath of legaltech. Backed by over $160 million, Hebbia creates software for white-collar professionals to help with contract review and due diligence. Marveri will need to crush on product and customer service to woo law firms away from their existing systems.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Legora Attracts $80 Million Series B Funding as Top Global Law Firms and Legal Teams Rush to Adopt Its Collaborative AI
Legora, the collaborative AI platform for lawyers, hits $675 million valuation with $80 million Series B funding round. With 250 clients in 20 markets, Legora counts prestigious global law firms like Cleary Gottlieb, Bird & Bird, Goodwin, Mannheimer Swartling, and Perez-Llorca as clients. In addition to prominence in the UK and wider Europe, the company has made significant inroads in the US with the opening of a New York office in April 2025. This latest funding is led by ICONIQ and General Catalyst, alongside existing investors Redpoint Ventures, Benchmark, and Y Combinator. LONDON & NEW YORK & STOCKHOLM, May 21, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, Legora announces an $80 million funding round led by ICONIQ and General Catalyst, with continued support from existing investors Redpoint Ventures, Benchmark, and Y Combinator. This latest round is a strong endorsement of Legora's product quality, velocity and the remarkable traction it has achieved globally—underscored by its rapid progression from inception to Series B in under two years. The deal comes as adoption of legal AI surges across the world. Legora is at the forefront of this shift - with lawyers across 250 firms and legal teams in 20 markets globally making daily use of its platform to review and research with precision, draft smarter, and collaborate seamlessly. Legora operates out of New York, London, and Stockholm, with 100 employees drawn from some of the world's leading global law firms and tech companies. Max Junestrand, CEO and founder of Legora said: "The investment is a clear validation of the value our product is delivering to lawyers around the world. While we weren't actively seeking funding, the strength of our growth, product, and client partnerships naturally attracted this backing, and I am ecstatic to have ICONIQ and General Catalyst with us on the journey as Seth and Jeannette join our board. "This enables us to double down on what's always set Legora apart — deep collaboration with our clients — and to scale innovation and accelerate product development, ensuring we leverage rapidly changing technology to meet the needs of the legal profession. We're committed to building a product that not only solves today's challenges but continues to adapt and deliver long-term value." Seth Pierrepont, General Partner at ICONIQ commented: "From our first conversation with Max and Sigge, it was immediately evident to us that they are building with rare clarity and velocity, creating a platform that doesn't just fit into legal workflows — it elevates them, and understands the nuance and pace of modern legal teams. In just two years, they've delivered an enterprise-grade product that's already trusted by hundreds of law firms and in-house legal teams globally. We're proud to partner with Legora as they scale what we believe is a category-defining platform that's reshaping how legal work gets done." Jeannette zu Fürstenberg, Managing Director and Head of Europe at General Catalyst said: "Legora is driving AI transformations in a highly specialized industry. With an outstanding product, rapid adoption by top-tier firms, and a founder who combines rare product instinct with exceptional execution, as we see it, Legora is redefining how legal work gets done. We're excited to support Max and the team as they scale this category-defining platform." Legora's collaborative approach to developing and embedding its AI underpins its success to date. More than just a platform, Legora is a true partner to clients, working alongside them from the first interaction to company-wide rollout and beyond. This ensures Legora's solution is intuitively matched to client needs, and that engagement is broad and deep from day one; with the technology embraced by junior lawyers right up to managing partners across enterprises. By building with lawyers, not just for them, Legora has accelerated adoption and delivered immediate value. Its AI platform is making a measurable impact at top law firms and in-house teams, powering multiple work-critical use cases and helping teams get to the heart of key issues in hours rather than days — enabling improved and more confident client responses with less write-offs. Mary O'Carroll, Goodwin's Chief Operating Officer commented: "Legora represents exactly the kind of strategic technology investment that keeps Goodwin at the forefront of legal excellence. We've been very pleased with the initial results we have seen since partnering with them in March, and we look forward to continuous improvement in how our lawyers use Legora to deliver legal services and insights to clients." Max Junestrand added: "AI, simply put, is a historic opportunity for legal professionals to get real leverage on their expertise and know-how. We have observed tasks such as reviewing data-rooms go from weeks to hours with no loss in accuracy - making human-machine intelligence and collaboration the de facto way of working. Both law firms and legal teams are already reaping the benefits of these advancements at scale." About Legora Legora is the world's first truly collaborative AI for lawyers serving over 250 law firms and in-house legal teams across 20 countries. Co-founded by CEO Max Junestrand and CTO Sigge Labor, Legora now has offices in New York, Stockholm and London and has raised $120M in funding to date. Legora works with prestigious clients such as Cleary Gottlieb, Goodwin and Bird & Bird - helping lawyers review, draft and work more effectively with AI. About ICONIQ ICONIQ is a global investment firm catalyzing opportunity through extraordinary community. Our venture and growth investment platform partners with visionaries defining the future of their industries to achieve uncommon outcomes. Drawing on the wisdom and connectivity of our extraordinary community, we support our portfolio companies' success at every inflection point, from early traction to IPO and beyond. Our robust portfolio includes Adyen, Airbnb, Alibaba, Alteryx, Automattic, BambooHR, Braze, Chime, Collibra, Coupa, Datadog, Docusign, Gitlab, Marqeta, Miro, Procore, Red Ventures, Relativity, ServiceTitan, Snowflake, Sprinklr, Truckstop, Uber, Wolt, and Zoom, among others. For more information, please visit About General Catalyst General Catalyst is a global investment and transformation company that partners with the world's most ambitious entrepreneurs to drive resilience and applied AI. We support founders with a long-term view who challenge the status quo, partnering with them from seed to growth stage and beyond. With offices in San Francisco, New York City, Boston, Berlin, Bangalore, and London, we have supported the growth of 800+ businesses, including Airbnb, Anduril, Applied Intuition, Commure, Glean, Guild, Gusto, Helsing, Hubspot, Kayak, Livongo, Mistral, Ramp, Samsara, Snap, Stripe, Sword, and Zepto. View source version on Contacts Notes to editors For media enquiries, please contact:press@ legora@ Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Business Insider
21-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
The offers flooded in for red-hot legal tech startup Legora's new $80 million funding round
General Catalyst and Iconiq Growth are co-leading an $80 million funding round into Legora, a startup that makes software to help bogged-down lawyers speed up legal research and drafting. The new funding for the New York, London, and Stockholm-based Legora will value the company at $675 million, following last year's $35 million Series A. Existing investors Redpoint Ventures, Benchmark, and Y Combinator increased their stakes in this Series B round. In an exclusive interview with Business Insider, Legora CEO Max Junestrand said the company wasn't actively seeking funding, but still, the offers flooded in. "I don't think it's a secret that things have been really working," Junestrand said. When Seth Pierrepont heard whispers of Legora's fundraise, he boarded a flight to Stockholm. The Iconiq investor had done dozens of calls with law firms about the tools changing the way their attorneys work. The Legora name kept coming up. "What they're looking for now is a partner," Pierrepont said, "someone that they know will build the features they ask for and will respond quickly to the questions they have. And I think that is the gap that Legora has stepped into." Junestrand declined to provide revenue or growth figures, but said the company's revenue growth is "extremely positive." It has 250 clients in 20 markets, including big-league law firms like Cleary Gottlieb, Goodwin, Bird & Bird, and Mannheimer Swartling, Sweden's largest law firm. Legora builds chatbots and agents — software that can perform basic tasks on their own — for things like redlining a contract, drafting, or filling in a checklist for a transaction. In recent months, it's added a Microsoft Word add-in and other features that large law firms demand. Legora's closest analog is legal-tech heavyweight Harvey. The company works closely with major law firms to craft custom software, offering the agility of a startup with the tailored approach of a high-end consulting firm. Its annual recurring revenue surpassed $70 million in April, according to a spokesperson. Legora's funding is the latest in a string of high-profile legal-tech investments, following companies like Harvey and Supio. General Catalyst, in particular, has been building a strong portfolio of startups reshaping the delivery of legal services. In February, it led a $105 million initial round for Eudia, a platform designed for Fortune 500 legal teams. Mary O'Carroll, Goodwin's chief operating officer, said the firm piloted many tools before signing up with Legora. On the surface, some of the products seem quite similar, she said. But Legora edged out its competition with a clean, easy-to-use interface and a feature called tabular review, which lets users search thousands of files for exactly the information they need all at once. Legora also stood out for its approach to empowering lawyers. The company meets regularly with firm leaders to tightly tailor the product to their needs. "We feel like we're not just adopting the technology," O'Carroll told BI, "we're co-creating with them." The new funding gives Legora fresh firepower to grow its team and chip away at Harvey's dominance. In addition, the company announced that General Catalyst's Jeannette zu Fürstenberg and Iconiq's Pierrepont have joined its board. Investors are betting on the team just as much as the tech to drive growth. Jack Altman, an investor through his venture firm Alt Capital, described Junestrand as an "ambitious, gritty" European founder with a Silicon Valley ethos. Gradient's Darian Shirazi, who wrote an angel check into Legora, praised Junestrand's customer obsession, which he says is matched only by his focus on results. With a team of around 100 employees, Legora is proving that smaller doesn't mean slower, and that being second to market doesn't mean it's out of the race.
Business Insider
13-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
What Harvey is doing to win the legal AI race it inadvertently started
Legal tech was long a space that investors ignored. Then came Harvey. In just three years, the company, which builds software for analyzing and drafting documents using legally tuned large language models, has drawn blue-chip law firms, Silicon Valley investors, and a stampede of rivals hoping to catch its momentum. Harvey has raised over half a billion dollars in capital, sending its valuation soaring to $3 billion. On a recent Monday afternoon at Harvey's Manhattan office, I met cofounder and chief executive Winston Weinberg in a polished conference room named for Atticus Finch, a beloved character from the novel "To Kill a Mockingbird." I mentioned that since I started covering legal tech a month ago, my inbox has been flooded with pitches from legal-tech startups eager to explain how they're not Harvey. Weinberg let out a soft chuckle. "I'll take that as a compliment, I guess." In recent years, more competition has been encroaching on Harvey's territory, and fast. Hebbia, a knowledge-search platform, has made a more focused push into the legal sector, and Legora, which offers an AI-powered workspace where lawyers can draft, edit, and collaborate, is gaining traction with Harvey's core clientele of Big Law firms. While legal tech was once the domain of ex-lawyers building tools for their peers, now it's attracting classically trained software engineers, eager to compete in a space without a staid market leader. Harvey may have cracked the market open, but now it faces the classic innovator's dilemma: the very proof of concept it offered to the legal world is fueling a growing list of competitors. The legal-tech land grab is on. The question is whether Harvey can maintain its first-mover advantage, or if it's simply cleared the path for the next breakout. Want in? Get in line. Part of what fueled Harvey's ascent is its go-to-market strategy. Early on, the company bet that winning over the country's most elite law firms would create a ripple effect across the industry. It gated access to the product using a waitlist, allowing it to tightly tailor the tool to pilot users. So far, its Big Law wager appears to be paying off. Weinberg said lawyers at eight of the 10 highest-grossing firms in the nation are now using Harvey. The company tells Business Insider it crossed $70 million in annual recurring revenue last quarter, putting it on pace to smash its goal of $100 million ARR for the year. "Once a subset of the market standardizes on a solution, it's kind of the solution," said Ilya Fushman, a venture capitalist who led Kleiner Perkins' investment in Harvey in 2023. Leaning forward in a high-back, caramel-colored leather chair, Weinberg seemed unfazed by the growing competition. Harvey's edge, he argued, lies in two places its rivals can't easily replicate: top-tier talent and a product strategy built on deep collaboration with its customers. The 260-person startup has lured dozens of trained lawyers off the gilded path to Big Law partnership, offering stock options and a shot at shaping the future of legal practice. To keep its edge, Harvey just made a key hire. Stripe veteran John Haddock has joined as chief business officer after a decade scaling one of Silicon Valley's most closely watched startups. Haddock told BI he spoke to dozens of Harvey customers before accepting an offer. His decision boiled down to their love of the product. He called it Weinberg's "No. 1 maniacal focus." "The best thing we can do is stay focused on: are we building stuff that lawyers really need and need every day?" he said. "Everything else takes care of itself." Harvey goes multi-model Harvey has been fighting the competition with one hand tied behind its back. Since its founding, the company has partnered closely with OpenAI to build custom models for lawyers. Its entire product ran on OpenAI's models. It's a limitation that Harvey's rivals have been quick to point out. They argue their products are superior because they can cherry-pick from the best of Anthropic, Meta, or Google, depending on the task. Now, Harvey wants to neutralize that criticism. The company tells BI it's going multi-model, starting with Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini. Weinberg said Harvey didn't avoid other models out of loyalty to OpenAI, but necessity. Until recently, most major law firms would only approve AI tools that ran through Microsoft Azure, which meant models like Claude and Gemini couldn't clear security reviews. Those constraints are falling away as vendors like Anthropic build the features enterprises demand and gain clout. The move may also suggest Harvey is adapting to a clientele that's perhaps more opinionated about which models power their tools, especially as rivals pitch flexibility as a selling point. Harvey's secret sauce In a market where model performance offers marginal gains, Harvey is betting that its true edge lies in how deeply the product molds to the client. "What I think is closer to a traditional moat," Weinberg said, "is we are very focused on customization, massively." The company partners directly with firms to build bespoke legal workflow software. With A&O Shearman, for example, Harvey helped develop a merger control tool that taps the firm's global antitrust bench. For another client focused on private equity, the company built out deal-specific workflows. Lawyers across those firms are using the tools, and the firms are selling that customized software to clients and other law firms, sharing a cut of the revenue with Harvey. If customization is the moat, the obvious question becomes: how does it scale? One investor in a Harvey competitor asked at what point the company becomes overrun with service requests and support tickets. The company's bet is that it can turn workflows from custom projects into reusable building blocks — a sort of Lego kit it can adapt for each new client. It's a bold strategy, but in a crowded field, Weinberg believes that winning won't come from better answers. It'll come from building a system that grows with the people asking the questions. "At the end of the day," he said, "what you want to do is build a solution that tracks the evolution of law over time."
Forbes
06-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Legal AI Startup Legora In Talks To Raise New Funding At A $675 Million Valuation
A flurry of AI startups are making a pitch that their tools can increase productivity and automate some tasks. Among them is fledgling AI startup Legora which is in talks to raise funding at a $675 million valuation. Getty AI startup Legora is in talks to raise $85 million in funding at a $675 million valuation, according to five sources familiar with the deal. General Catalyst and Iconiq are leading the deal, these people said. Existing investors Redpoint Ventures and Benchmark are also participating in the round. Legora, General Catalyst and Iconiq have not yet responded to requests for comment. Legora's AI software helps lawyers draft contracts, review and analyze documents, and run checks against legal databases, automating some of the most repetitive and tedious tasks for attorneys. Its system is built on top of Microsoft's Azure platform and combines a variety of AI models from the likes of OpenAI and Meta. Over the last few months, Legora has signed deals with a string of big name law firms like Cleary Gottlieb, Goodwin and London-based Addleshaw Goddard. Cofounded in 2023 in Stockholm by 25-year-old CEO Max Junestrand, CTO Sigge Labor and CPO August Erseus, the 60-person company now boasts over 250 customers across more than 20 countries, according to its website. In February, the company rebranded itself from Leya to Legora and soon after opened new offices in New York City, its first outpost outside Europe. At the time it had just $35 million in total backing. With this new raise it has about $120 million. It's still playing catch up with OpenAI-backed rival Harvey which has raised over $500 million with its last round at a $3 billion valuation. Before starting Legora, Junestrand worked as an analyst at European venture fund Norrsken VC. Months after OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022, his Swedish cofounders Labor and Erseus built a chatbot that allowed a person to ask questions about documents they uploaded into it. That became the genesis for Legora, which was part of startup accelerator Y Combinator's Winter 2024 batch. A flurry of AI startups are making a pitch that their tools can increase productivity and automate some tasks. Harvey AI is stacked up against British rival Robin AI, and EvenUp, which specializes in processing personal injury claims and raised a $135 million round led by Bain Capital Ventures in October, notching a valuation of over $1 billion. In 2023, Thomson Reuters acquired legal AI firm Castext for $650 million. And then there are smaller startups like Spellbook, Supio and Luminance. Lawyers could make an ideal testing ground for AI tools given that unlike many other knowledge workers they closely track productivity with client billing often measured in six minute increments. And with many large American law firms billing clients on average around $1,000 per hour, and partners' pay packets linked with profits, many have been quick to sign AI trials that could potentially reduce both time and costs. Legora's new round comes on the heels of a 2024 $25 million Series A funding round led by Redpoint Ventures along with participation from Y Combinator, Benchmark, Wayfinder Ventures and Jack Altman's Alt Capital. MORE FROM FORBES Forbes AI Startup Decagon In Talks To Raise $100 Million At A $1.5 Billion Valuation By Rashi Shrivastava Forbes Khosla Ventures In Talks To Lead $100 Million Funding For Defense Startup Mach By David Jeans Forbes Why OpenAI And Google Are Betting On This AI Unicorn With A $100 Million Deal By Alicia Park Forbes For AI Startups, A 7-Day Work Week Isn't Enough By Richard Nieva
