With the demand for generative AI in the legal sector ramping up, AI-powered legal copilot Robin AI recently announced it raised $26 million in a new round of funding. Temasek, a global investment company headquartered in Singapore, led the Series B funding round. Other investors include QuantumLight, Plural, and AFG Partners.
Robin AI was launched in 2019 by Richard Robinson, a lawyer at Clifford Chance, and James Clough, a machine learning research scientist at Imperial College. And it utilizes the power of generative AI to automate and speed up the process of drafting and negotiating contracts and extracting information from 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 invest their time more strategically.
Robin AI places quality and accuracy at the heart of its approach. And 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 enables much longer prompts than other LLMs (around 150,000 words in each prompt), a key benefit for analyzing 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 proprietary contract data (from over 2 million contracts) and machine learning techniques to read and understand contracts. And an in-house team of legal professionals, or lawyers-in-the-loop, helps to refine the model further 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 test out a free version of the copilot.
Robin AI saw significant traction for its contract copilot, with customers increasing by 4x in the past year and revenues increasing by 5x. And 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’s customers include Pepsico, PwC, Yum! Brands, AlbaCore Capital Group, and BlueEarth Capital.
This funding round will enable Robin AI to capitalize on the strong momentum it is seeing in a very fast-moving market. And 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 for expanding its existing team of AI and machine learning experts.
Robin AI’s contract copilot was recently launched as a Microsoft Word add-in, which makes 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 it 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 enables customers to use natural language search to find information like obligations across all of the contracts they have signed.
KEY QUOTES:
“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.”
— Robin AI CEO and co-founder Richard Robinson
“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.”
— Carina Namih, Partner at Plural
“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.”
— Ilya Kondrashov, CEO at QuantumLight
“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.”
— Ivan Ong, Partner at AFG Partners
