Robin AI Raises $26 million as Legal Sector Embraces AI

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Jan 02, 2024, 19:01 ET

Anthropic launch partner sees 5x revenue growth with Fortune 500 customers including Pepsico and Yum! Brands
Investment will be used to accelerate US expansion, launch in Asia Pacific and hire more AI engineers

LONDON and NEW YORK, Jan. 2, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- As demand for generative AI in the legal sector explodes, Robin AI, the AI-powered legal copilot, today announces that it has raised $26 million in new funding. The Series B round is led by Temasek, a global investment company headquartered in Singapore. Other investors include QuantumLight, Plural and AFG Partners.

Robin AI was founded in 2019 by Richard Robinson, a lawyer at Clifford Chance, and James Clough, a machine learning research scientist at Imperial College. It leverages the power of generative AI to automate and speed up the process of drafting and negotiating contracts, as well as extracting information from across entire contract repositories through simple search. Its legal copilot, available as a Microsoft Word add-in, can cut the time it takes to review contracts by 85%, allowing businesses' legal teams to move faster, save money and ultimately invest their time more strategically.

Robin AI places quality and accuracy at the heart of its approach. Earlier this year, it became one of Anthropic's launch partners for the release of their Large Language Model (LLM), Claude - the only such partner applying this technology to legal work. Claude 2.1 allows much longer prompts than other LLMs (around 150,000 words in each prompt), a key benefit for analysing long and complex legal documents. Anthropic is also dedicated to building frontier AI models that are safe and reliable.

Robin AI operates a unique hybrid model that combines the Claude LLM with its own proprietary contract data (from over 2 million contracts) and machine learning techniques to read and understand contracts. An in-house team of legal professionals, or lawyers-in-the-loop, helps to further refine the model to ensure the highest levels of quality and accuracy. Unlike many other legal AI products that are in beta or hidden behind waiting lists, anyone can try out a free version of the copilot at www.robinai.com.

Robin AI has seen significant traction for its contract copilot with customers increasing by 4x in the past year and revenues by 5x. It has seen especially strong demand from the private equity sector where speed is critical to deal closures and where the tracking of obligations to investors can be complex. Robin AI customers include Pepsico, PwC, Yum! Brands, AlbaCore Capital Group, and BlueEarth Capital.

CEO and co-founder Richard Robinson, who has relocated to New York to support the US expansion, said: "We've seen incredible customer traction with what we believe is the smartest AI contract copilot on the market. But this is just the beginning. We are building the AI platform for the legal sector - a service that deeply understands every aspect of the legal function, from drafting contracts, researching case law to explaining legal concepts - our AI will help people tackle every legal task. This will help level the playing field between big and small law firms and help more people access legal services. This investment will help us to realise this vision."

Carina Namih, Partner at Plural, said, "Everyone is wondering how AI lands usefully. Robin is delivering AI products to an astonishing volume and range of customers – serious businesses across sectors that are using it today to transform how they work. And they've only scratched the surface. I have backed this team since inception and couldn't be more bullish about their ability to win the global legal market."

Ilya Kondrashov, CEO at QuantumLight, said, "Robin AI has built a great team and product and have developed an impressive record of acquiring major enterprise accounts in a short period of time. As an AI-driven VC firm, we immediately saw the potential of Robin AI's system to drive tremendous efficiency in the field of legal services. We are extremely grateful for the opportunity to come along with Richard, James and the wider team at Robin AI on their exciting journey to realise the potential of AI and build one of the most significant companies in the AI applications space."

Ivan Ong, Partner at AFG Partners, said, "Robin AI is addressing a central issue in the legal industry, and in a short time has positioned itself as a market leader in a space that has significant growth potential. As a global fund backed by investors from financial services, we believe that there should be a better way to manage the growing number of legal contracts between stakeholders. Robin AI is highly applicable across our network of investors and ecosystem partners and we look forward to scaling the company deeper into Asia and globally. We are pleased to join Temasek and other seasoned investors as we support Robin AI on its growth journey."

The funding will allow Robin AI to capitalise on the strong momentum it is seeing in a very fast moving market. This includes expanding its team on the ground in the US where three quarters of its revenue is already derived from; as well as opening an office in Singapore to expand into Asia Pacific. The investment will also be used to expand its existing team of AI and machine learning experts.

Robin AI's contract copilot was recently launched as a Microsoft Word add-in making it even easier for lawyers to incorporate into their day-to-day work (the vast majority of lawyers use MS Word to draft, edit and review contracts). The copilot can be trained with a customer's negotiating playbook and will quickly review a contract, identify clauses and propose edits, which can easily be accepted or rejected - all while ensuring lawyers retain full control. The Robin copilot also allows customers to use natural language search to find information, such as obligations, across all of the contracts they have signed.

About Robin AI
Robin AI serves a diverse range of customers from large multinational corporations to SMEs and scale-ups. For example, our free self-serve software helps SMEs process contracts faster and at significantly lower cost - and bigger businesses can make use of more advanced AI features to edit and query high volume contracts efficiently, alongside specialist support from our 45 in-house legal professionals.

Founded in 2019 by Richard Robinson, a former lawyer at Clifford Chance, and James Clough, a former machine learning research scientist at KCL and Imperial College, Robin AI has a 100+ team of full-time employees, including legal professionals and software engineers. The Robin AI team is based in London and New York but operates globally. 75% of its revenue is derived from the US.

About Temasek
Temasek is a global investment company with a net portfolio value of S$382 billion (US$287b) as at 31 March 2023. Its Purpose "So Every Generation Prospers" guides it to make a difference for today's and future generations. As an active investor, forward looking institution and trusted steward, it is committed to deliver sustainable value over the long term. Temasek has overall corporate credit ratings of Aaa/AAA by rating agencies Moody's Investors Service and S&P Global Ratings respectively. Headquartered in Singapore, it has 13 offices in 9 countries around the world: Beijing, Hanoi, Mumbai, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Singapore in Asia; and London, Brussels, Paris, New York, San Francisco, Washington DC, and Mexico City outside Asia. 

About QuantumLight
QuantumLight is a global AI-driven venture capital and growth equity firm, founded by Nik Storonsky (CEO and founder of Revolut) and managed by Ilya Kondrashov (co-founder of Kriya Finance). QuantumLight relies on 'Aleph', its AI system, to identify and invest in the most promising growth companies, while helping them scale by drawing on Nik's experience in building Revolut into one of the World's most successful fintech companies.

About AFG Partners
AFG Partners is an Asian-based VC fund specialised in investing in global B2B fintech companies that want to grow in Asia and have an interest in partnering or commercializing with financial institutions, emerging challengers and corporates in Asia. With offices across Singapore and Hong Kong, the fund has invested in and has helped scale companies such as Aspire, Sprout, Brankas, Supercede, SESAMm, Necto (fka Finlync) and Tradystream.

SOURCE Robin AI