If there’s one area of the GenAI market that isn’t struggling for momentum, it’s legaltech. Large language models (LLMs) are, as the name suggests, best suited to take on tasks involving large quantities of language and text — and commercial lawyers are jumping on the opportunities to get some assistance.
Today, Stockholm-based Leya, which has developed a generative AI product to automate repetitive and manual tasks done by lawyers, is announcing a $25m Series A round, just two months after raising a $10.5m seed round. The round was led by US VC Redpoint Ventures, with participation from existing investors Benchmark, Y Combinator and Wayfinder Ventures, with new investors Alt Capital also participating.
“We need to scale up rapidly to meet the demand we’ve been seeing,” says Leya’s cofounder and CEO Max Junestrand. Raising fresh capital so soon after the previous funding round is a matter of urgency, Junestrand adds, as the company tries to stay ahead of a crowded field.
“What tends to happen in vertical SaaS is that you don’t have a lot of winners, but you have a few really big ones. That’s obviously why we’re raising more capital and why we’re working really hard.”
Other European startups that have raised money to build similar products in recent months include LegalFly, Luminance, Robin AI, Definely and Wordsmith AI.
How is Leya different?
In comparison to its competitors, Junestrand says Leya “spends a lot more time with [customers] actually solving problems that they have today”.
“It takes them a lot of manual time to actually sit down and do that,” he adds.
He says that the biggest competition Leya tends to come up against is Sequoia-backed, San Francisco-based Harvey, and Thomson Reuters, which has developed a GenAI-powered legal tool called CoCounsel.
Leya currently has clients in 10 different markets and recently launched in the UK, where it counts law firm Bird&Bird as a customer.
With the fresh funding, the startup will invest in product and its go-to-market team, and says it will grow its 30-strong team in line with demand increasing.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/ai-legaltech-leya-raise-news/
