In a world where technology and contract management are increasingly intertwined, Robin AI, a British legaltech specialising in contract management, has just reached a new milestone.
After raising more than $10 million in early 2023, the London start-up, founded in 2019, has raised $26 million in a Series B funding round led by Temasek, a leading Singapore-based investor. Other heavyweight investors, such as QuantumLight, Plural and AFG Partners, also contributed to this success.
What is Robin AI?
Founded by Richard Robinson (a former lawyer at Clifford Chance) and James Clough (a CTO specialising in machine learning), the start-up aims mainly to streamline certain stages of the contract lifecycle (like many other legaltechs!).
Its solution is an AI-powered legal copilot that plugs into Microsoft Word and automates contract drafting and negotiation. The promise is as classic as they come: to cut contract review time by up to 85%, and to give legal teams the ability to work faster, save time and invest it more strategically.
More concretely, Robin AI’s operating model combines the large language model (LLM) « Claude », which can handle longer prompts (up to around 150,000 words), with its own contract data and machine learning techniques. This combination allows contracts to be read and understood in depth, going further than Chat GPT.
Rapid success and ambitious expansion
In just a few years, Robin AI has already won an impressive market and, last year, multiplied its number of clients by four and its revenue by five (unpublished figures – source: Robin AI). The start-up has already seen more than half a million contracts pass through its platform and counts among its clients well-known companies such as Pepsico, PwC, Yum! Brands, AlbaCore Capital Group and BlueEarth Capital.
With this new funding round, Robin AI plans to expand its team in the United States, where it already generates three quarters of its revenue, and to open an office in Singapore in order to grow in Asia-Pacific. In its press release, the start-up says nothing more about its ambitions on the old continent, which suggests a focus on countries with an Anglo-Saxon legal culture that already represent a more than sizeable market!
A funding round that sounds like a wake-up call for French legaltechs
After Harvey a few months ago, this significant legaltech funding round across the Channel simultaneously highlights how rare fundraising is in the French legaltech landscape, and how small the amounts raised there are. While Tomorro (formerly Leeway) announced a €11m funding round a few weeks ago, the French legaltech start-ups that manage to raise more than €5 million can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
This gap in access to capital leaves French start-ups little room to exist in a CLM market that must rise as quickly as possible to the challenge of personalised generative AI. Yet training a personalised model suited to the needs of European countries with a Latin or Germanic culture requires significant human investment. Faced with well-funded and innovative international competitors such as Robin AI, French players must be even more inventive, agile and creative if they are to stand out and offer unique solutions that meet the specific needs of the French and European market… before the Anglo-Saxon giants arrive!