Google has doubled down on legaltech Lawhive in a $40m Series A amid a flurry of investment in startups deploying AI in the sector.
The round was led by existing investor Google Ventures and new investor TQ Ventures. Balderton Capital, Jigsaw, Episode 1 and professional footballers Harry Maguire and Reece James also participated.
It comes just eight months after Lawhive raised an $11.9m seed round in April. The startup is one of many in Europe that has cashed in on VC FOMO as investors bet big on the commercial opportunity brought by AI streamlining laborious legal processes like drafting and reviewing documents.
Lawhive will spend the funding on expansion in the US.
Standing out
Founded in 2019, UK-based Lawhive sells an AI-powered platform for lawyers focused on consumer and small business law, deploying the tech to help with workflow management, compliance and payments. It also matches lawyers with clients through a marketplace. Lawhive charges lawyers based on the volume of legal fees they bill through the platform.
“A lot of work in legal AI is on the corporate/in-house legal side — companies like Harvey, Leya, RobinAI,” says Pierre Proner, founder and CEO, who argues Lawhive stands out for its focus on consumer law. “There’s an opportunity to build a global brand that will have winner-take-most dynamics.”
The AI legaltech boom
In the UK, in the past six months alone, several other AI legaltech startups have attracted funding: Luminance raised $40m, Robin AI picked up $26m, Definely $7m and Wordsmith AI $5m. Sweden’s Leya Law also raised $25m.
Those rounds have attracted some notable names in VC.
Revolut’s Nik Storonsky’s family office QuantumLight, VC firms Plural and Episode 1 have backed Robin AI. Notion Capital — which counts unicorns like fintech GoCardless and SaaS platform Paddle among its portfolio — put money behind LegalFly. Index Ventures and General Catalyst invested in Wordsmith AI. Leya Law got backing from Benchmark.
Lawhive isn’t the only AI legaltech on Google’s books either. In October, Google Ventures backed UK-based Genie AI in an $18m Series A.
Big corporates have also stepped into the space. In August, global news and tech company Thomson Reuters acquired UK AI startup Safe Sign Technologies, which develops large language models (LLMs) for the legal sector, for an undisclosed sum. Microsoft’s venture arm M12 also backed UK legaltech Definely prior to its $7m Series A this year.
The challenge for many of these startups looking to gobble up market share before competitors will be breaking into the US market — which is significantly bigger than many in Europe.
“The US legal market is about 10 times the size of the UK’s,” Nnamdi Emelifeonwu, CEO and cofounder of Definely told Sifted in May — pointing to the 205k registered solicitors in the UK versus 1.3m in the US.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/lawhive-40m-ai-legaltech-raise-news/
