Rightsline announced a $500 million strategic growth investment from Hg to accelerate the company’s AI innovation initiatives and international expansion efforts.
Klass Capital, which has been Rightsline’s majority owner since 2020, along with Salem Partners and the broader management team, will continue investing alongside Hg as part of the transaction.
Rightsline provides rights and royalties management software for IP-intensive industries, helping organizations manage ownership rights, licensing agreements, royalty calculations, accounting, and financial workflows across increasingly complex global ecosystems. The company serves more than 300 organizations worldwide across industries including media and entertainment, publishing, consumer products, life sciences, technology, gaming, music, and franchising.
The company said its platform processes more than $40 billion in royalties annually and manages more than 150 million IP assets across 28 countries.
Rightsline noted that 2025 marked a record year for growth across bookings, revenue, and customer retention, with momentum continuing into 2026 following another record first quarter.
The company has also expanded its AI-powered product offerings, including an AI contract ingestion assistant that automates extraction of key terms from legal agreements and a natural-language rights and availabilities assistant that allows users to search rights libraries using plain English queries.
Hg said the investment will help accelerate Rightsline’s product and AI roadmap through its Hg Catalyst AI product incubator and support expansion into additional international markets and verticals.
As part of the investment, Farouk Hussein and Annie Wei from Hg will join the Rightsline board alongside Daniel Klass and Patrick Arkeveld. Ron Kasner will also join as independent chair.
KEY QUOTES:
“The IP landscape has become increasingly complex, with more platforms, territories, and contractual complexity than ever. That creates a clear opportunity for us to innovate on behalf of our customers and make their lives meaningfully easier, but more crucially to drive better business outcomes. Farouk and the Hg team are the ideal partner to help us deliver on that ambition, combining deep AI and operational expertise to accelerate our product roadmap and a transatlantic network to support our expansion into new geographies and verticals. We’re also grateful for the continued support of Daniel and Klass Capital, whose reinvestment reflects the shared conviction we all have in what lies ahead.”
Patrick Arkeveld, CEO, Rightsline
“Patrick, Daniel, and the Rightsline team have built something genuinely exceptional. Rightsline provides a truly unified rights and royalties platform, bolstered by proprietary calculation engines, data, and algorithms, enriched with decades of domain experience. The company boasts an impressive roster of blue-chip customers and a consistent track record of sustained growth and retention that speaks to how deeply embedded the product is in its customers’ legal, sales, finance and operations workflows. Rightsline is incredibly well-positioned to expands its presence across its core verticals with this growth investment, and we’re excited to work hand-in-hand with management and our Hg Catalyst team to build the next generation of agentic AI products for IP lifecycle management.”
Farouk Hussein, Partner, Hg
“Patrick and the team have built Rightsline into a clear global leader in rights and royalties software. When we set out to find our next partner, we wanted a firm that shares our growth ambitions and has the operational depth – particularly in AI and international scaling – to help take the company to the next level. Hg was the clear choice, and our decision to reinvest meaningfully alongside them reflects our strong conviction that the best chapter for Rightsline is still ahead.”
Daniel Klass, Founder, Klass Capital
“In publishing, royalties vary by channel, format, territory and more, and simply knowing what we have the right to sell in each market can be incredibly complex. Keeping track of all that, and making sure the right people get paid accurately, is a real operational challenge. Rightsline handles that complexity for us and, as the publishing world continues to grow more complex, we’re excited to see Hg’s investment accelerate what’s already an industry-leading platform.”
Donna Laing, Vice President, Royalty Accounting & Rights Data Management, Scholastic
