LinkSquares, a Boston-based, AI-powered contract lifecycle management and analysis company founded in 2015, has raised $40 million in a Series B funding round, bringing its total raise to date to $61.4 million.
This latest round was led by existing investor Sorenson Capital and joined by new investors Catalyst Investors, Xerox, Bottomline Technologies, DraftKings’ founders, and several legal and compliance executives. Existing investors Jump Capital, Hyperplane Venture Capital, MassMutual Ventures and First Ascent Ventures also participated in the round.
LinkSquares says it has more than 200 customers that include Fitbit, Twilio, TGI Fridays, Wayfair and Cogito. It was named among the 2020 Gartner Cool Vendors for Contract Lifecycle Management and Advanced Contract Analytics.
In a blog post this morning, LinkSquares CEO and cofounder Vishal Sunak, wrote, “With this infusion of capital, we are laying out some big goals.”
To describe those goals, he painted an analogy to the evolution of boats from manual to sail to power. Similarly, he said, law firms and legal departments traditionally ran on manual power, addressing issues by throwing more people and billable hours at them.
“Today, we’re witnessing the next major step up in power, thanks to artificial intelligence software,” Sunak wrote. “AI is creating legal solutions that can outpace and outperform traditional software in the same way steamships and diesel-powered vessels could outperform even the most impressive wind-powered tall ships.”
And just as the step up to power changed what boats could do, “Linksquares is changing what a legal software solution can do and be.”
The Series B, he continued, will enable the company “to accelerate the AI revolution of legal software, and to build legal tech solutions that simply weren’t possible before.”
That is starting with developing new products that will power every part of the contracting process with AI, and that, he said, “will offer functionality no one has seen before.”
That includes, he said, the launch within the new few months n the next few months of “a first-of-its-kind product that will change the way businesses complete the contracting process.”
He wrapped up his analogy with a comparison to nuclear technology in ships and submarines.
“Artificial intelligence designed and built for legal teams is the nuclear power plant of legal technology,” he said. “It leads to designs that can do more than previous solutions, not just the old stuff faster.”