Latest news with #SarahGuo
Bloomberg
4 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Bloomberg Businessweek Celebrates the 2025 Ones to Watch in Tech
Bloomberg Businessweek celebrates its 2025 Ones to Watch in Tech list. Editor Brad Stone sits down with one of the honorees, Sarah Guo, Founder of Conviction for her take on where to invest around AI at Bloomberg Tech in San Francisco. (Source: Bloomberg)
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.
India Today
19-05-2025
- Business
- India Today
Duolingo CEO says AI tutors will replace schools in future, schools will be only for childcare
Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn has asserted that AI could become the primary educator and schools could turn into supervised spaces for children in the future. In a recent conversation on the No Priors podcast hosted by venture capitalist Sarah Guo, von Ahn said AI tutors will eventually be more effective and scalable than human teachers, prompting a change in the purpose schools clarified that he doesn't see schools shutting down or teachers losing relevance entirely. Instead, the focus of schools could gradually move away from formal teaching and more towards providing a safe and structured environment where students are cared for, while the learning part happens through advanced AI traditional classrooms with large groups of students, providing personalised learning remains a major challenge. Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn believes AI can bridge this gap by adapting lessons to each student's individual pace and learning needs. Unlike human teachers, who may struggle to track every child's progress in a class of 30 or more, AI systems can instantly identify weaknesses and adjust content in real time, offering a level of precision that's difficult to achieve acknowledged that the transition would be slow. Education systems tend to resist change, often due to regulations, cultural expectations, and outdated infrastructure. However, he feels AI's role in classrooms is only going to expand, particularly in countries where scaling high-quality education is a pressing signs of this change are already visible in countries like South Korea. The country has introduced AI-powered digital textbooks in about 30 per cent of its schools since March this year. The update, reported by Nikkei Asia, shows a major change in how lessons are delivered. During a recent APEC education summit hosted by South Korea, officials demonstrated the use of these tools, including a live class in Jeju where students solved math problems on tablets while their answers appeared on a shared idea is to make learning more interactive and data-driven. However, there are hurdles — unequal access to digital tools in different regions and the need to train teachers to work alongside AI are among the concerns that need to be addressed. At the same time, the debate over AI's place in education isn't limited to school classrooms. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman recently spoke about how universities also need to evolve as AI becomes an inevitable part of future learning.
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
She was one of the youngest general partners in venture capital. Now she's at the forefront of AI investing
Sarah Guo didn't just grow up around startups—from her youngest years, she was immersed in one. Her parents ran Casa, a cable and telecom infrastructure startup competing with industry giants like Cisco and Ericsson, and serving customers like Time Warner. The team was relatively small and tight-knit—and it was challenging 10,000-person competitors on the strength of their products. Guo was drawn to startup chaos even then, showing up to the office each day after school. Surrounded by snacks and Diet Cokes, she'd tag along with engineers, soaking up how their jobs really worked and learning to code. 'It was really formative for me to see how fun and stressful startups were,' Guo said. 'It wasn't a particularly well-networked group of people, but the product was the best in the market.' Fast-forward to today: Guo is the founder of Conviction, one of the most talked-about venture firms investing in the hottest area in VC: AI. Since Guo founded Conviction in 2022, the firm has backed some of the buzziest AI startups out there, including the legal AI startup Harvey (last valued at $3 billion), French open-source AI startup Mistral (last valued at $6 billion), inference platform Baseten (last valued $825 million), and ex-Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor's conversational AI platform Sierra (last valued at $4.5 billion). Guo is part of a wave of VCs—from legendary firms like Sequoia Capital to accelerators like Y Combinator—looking to invest in this transformational next era of technology. And as a sought-after early-stage investor, her firm will be on the ground floor shaping what that future of AI looks like. Conviction has so far remained small, with eight people on staff including Guo and former Sequoia partner Mike Vernal. 'I don't care a lot about scale and power,' says Guo. 'I don't think that's how entrepreneurs make their decisions about early-stage partners. I think they care about trust and understanding. They do care about brand, and they should. But that's different from: 'I need the $10 to $50 billion AUM manager behind me as the first check.'' Before founding Conviction, Guo became a general partner at vaunted VC firm Greylock while still in her 20s. She left that position behind to strike out on her own. So, in addition to AI, her firm is right in the middle of another trend: the bifurcation of venture. As firms are becoming bigger, some are leaning into the 'collect-them-all' ethos of asset management, moving away from venture's cottage-industry tradition. Guo is sometimes talked about as a challenger to established VC firms, a notion she doesn't think fits. 'I actually think I'm pretty traditionalist,' says the 35-year-old, who fundamentally sees venture as as services business. 'I'm going to say a couple things that—ludicrous to me—are controversial. Some of my very favorite growth and crossover investors, and other early-stage investors, will say that judgment doesn't matter. That it's all just access and a random draw. I don't believe that, and we don't behave as if that's true.' The early days of Conviction were an expected whirlwind; as ChatGPT came out, Guo was looking for office space. She'd personally been an early investor in Inflection AI, cofounded by Greylock's Reid Hoffman and DeepMind's Mustafa Suleyman, so the underpinning technology didn't surprise her, exactly. What she has been surprised by is the rate of change, and how quickly longstanding assumptions can become obsolete. Case in point, from well before she started Conviction—in 2016, Guo considered leaving Greylock to start an AI company with Andrew Ng, AI research pioneer, cofounder of Coursera, and founder of Google Brain. Their idea: An AI-driven language learning startup. She ultimately decided that the technology wasn't there at the time—but recently told Duolingo cofounder Luis von Ahn that he got it right. ('It took a minute,' she says he told her.) Now, she recalls that example to illustrate how fast AI is evolving. 'I'm not at all saying that I would have been able to build anything like Duolingo,' she says. 'But what I am saying is that the market is now possible, and I think that's now true for a lot of things. One of my big beliefs about doing venture in 2025 in AI is that a lot of your priors, your existing beliefs about markets just don't make sense anymore. They're not actually relevant, because the technology changes a lot." Guo hosts a podcast with famed solo GP Elad Gil called No Priors. And, in some sense, that's the crux of the thesis behind Conviction—that we can't trust our previous assumptions and that it's going to take work to find the truth. In that pursuit, Guo publishes all her LP letters, essentially open sourcing her thinking. 'You are much more likely to find the truth if you are curious and willing to be wrong," she says. Guo's bet that AI matters has proven to be right, but she still faces the question that all investors in the space do: Where is the long-term value in AI? Guo thinks about the crystal hammer gag gift she received from an investor friend when she started the firm, amid a wave of skepticism. "The joke was that you have this AI hammer, and that's not the way you should go looking for companies to invest in,' Guo explains. 'And I'm like, well, it kind of depends: How good is the hammer? AI is a great hammer. So, what are the interesting nails out there in the world?" This story was originally featured on Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
09-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Arm Holdings (ARM): Record Revenue, But AI Growth Faces Cyclical Headwinds
We recently published a list of . In this article, we are going to take a look at where Arm Holdings plc (NASDAQ:ARM) stands against other trending AI news updates on Wall Street's radar. Sarah Guo, founder of Conviction, spoke on Bloomberg Technology about the evolving AI space and the impact of open-source models. She noted that AI has developed rapidly since her firm launched, reinforcing its belief in its long-term significance. Initially, the firm invested in application companies and vertically integrated businesses, a strategy she believes remains relevant today. She pointed out that competition among foundation models has increased significantly in recent weeks. Guo also discussed Deep Seek and described it as a powerful model with multiple layers, including a base model, an instruction-tuned version, and a reasoning model. While DeepSeek's origins in a Chinese hedge fund surprised many, she sees its open-source nature as beneficial for developers and a challenge for the U.S. to stay competitive in AI. She also emphasized that no single country holds exclusive control over AI talent, making export restrictions less effective. When the discussion shifted to investment trends, Guo explained that while AI is expanding economic opportunities across infrastructure, tooling, and model development, her firm prioritizes applications and industry-specific solutions. She noted that training large models remains costly, despite claims of lower expenses, and expects the most sustainable growth to come from application-focused companies. Guo also discussed agentic AI and how it improves customer experiences in industries such as finance and travel. She explained that AI's ability to handle more complex tasks increases its value to businesses, making applications that automate tasks more attractive. As AI continues to advance beyond simple responses, she expects companies working on industry-specific automation to capture significant market value. For this article, we selected AI stocks by reviewing news articles, stock analysis, and press releases. We listed the stocks in ascending order of their hedge fund sentiment taken from Insider Monkey's database of 900 hedge funds. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter's strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (). Close-up of Silicon Die are being Extracted from Semiconductor Wafer and Attached to Substrate by Pick and Place Machine. Computer Chip Manufacturing at Fab. Semiconductor Packaging Process. Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 38 Arm Holdings plc (NASDAQ:ARM) designs and licenses semiconductor technologies, including microprocessors and system IP products, serving markets like automotive, computing, and IoT. On February 6, Bernstein maintained its Underperform rating on Arm with a price target of $100, due to concerns about cyclical challenges. Arm's Q3FY25 revenues reached a record $983 million, exceeding expectations, driven by strong licensing and royalties. However, v9 adoption has stalled at 25% of royalties, missing earlier growth projections. While Q4 guidance aligns with expectations, full-year revenue was only slightly revised upward. Bernstein highlighted the company's increasing reliance on related parties revenue, especially from China, and remains cautious on short-term performance, despite long-term growth potential in AI and related sectors. The firm said: 'There was significant commentary on AI traction, expectations for Compute Subsystems (CSS), and the broader ecosystem, indicating continued long-term potential. Arm emphasized its focus on building capacity to address these opportunities, suggesting a continued commitment to R&D spending. However, in the near term, even with the slight uptick in full-year guidance now slightly ahead of expectations, we believe the response from investors may be muted given current valuation levels. We remain cautious on cyclical headwinds for now, though we acknowledge the long-term story continues to develop positively.' Overall, ARM ranks 2nd on our list of trending AI news updates on Wall Street's radar. While we acknowledge the potential of ARM as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than ARM but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock. READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and Complete List of 59 AI Companies Under $2 Billion in Market Cap Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
