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Tag: Funding round

  • Lawhive, which started out selling to tech to law firms but then became one, raises $60 million in new funding | Fortune

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    Lawhive, a British startup that wants to use AI to transform the business model of law firms that perform routine legal work for individuals and small businesses, has raised $60 million in new venture capital funding to accelerate its expansion in the U.S.

    The Series B funding round was led by Mitch Rales, cofounder of Danaher Corporation, the $170 billion science and technology conglomerate. Other investors included TQ Ventures, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Balderton Capital, and Jigsaw. The funding comes less than a year after Lawhive raised a $40 million Series A round.

    Lawhive is not a pure software company. Instead, it is a legal services firm that employs a network of human lawyers who are assisted by a technology platform Lawhive has built. The company says this enables it to provide legal services more efficiently and at lower cost than a traditional general practice law firm. The company is among a wave of startups employing this new business model. Others include Robin AI, General Legal, Third Chair, and LegalOS. The model is distinct from other AI law startups such as Harvey, which just sell AI systems for lawyers to use.

    Founded in 2020, Lawhive has built what it calls an AI operating system for consumer law. The company handles routine legal matters including family law, landlord and tenant disputes, property transactions, and consumer rights cases. Its technology automates tasks such as document drafting, legal research, case management, and client intake. It says that about 500 lawyers now work through its platform across three regulated law firms—two in the U.K. and one in Arizona.

    Democratizing access to legal help

    “We’re the overnight success that took five years to build,” said Pierre Proner, Lawhive’s chief executive. The company’s annual revenue now exceeds $35 million and has grown seven-fold in the past year, according to Proner.

    Lawhive is targeting what it says is a large and underserved segment of the legal market—the kind of general legal services that individuals and small businesses need. The company estimates that the consumer legal market in the U.S. generates about $200 billion in revenue annually, but that there is an even larger potential market.

    “There’s a $200 billion existing market, but there’s a trillion dollars of unmet need, of people who have serious legal problems every year who can’t afford an attorney,” Proner said.

    Rales, who built Danaher into one of the world’s most successful industrial companies over four decades, said in a statement that he was drawn to Lawhive’s mission of making legal services more accessible. “Lawhive is democratizing legal services,” he said.

    A can’t beat ’em, join ’em pivot

    Lawhive started out trying to sell automation software to traditional retail law firms, but Proner said many small firms were reluctant to buy. He said lawyers at these firms were skeptical about adopting the technology, partly out of concern that spending less time on cases would make it harder to justify their fees to clients, even though many of these firms already charged fixed fees rather than using a model based on billable hours.  

    So Lawhive pivoted and decided to become a law firm itself, Proner said. He said this allowed Lawhive to “reimagine” the design of the law firm from the ground up, with AI at the heart of how the firm operates both in terms of producing legal work but also doing back office tasks such as invoicing and client onboarding. He says that in many small law firms these tasks account for up to 70% of the firm’s costs. He contrasted Lawhive’s approach with other legal AI companies that “are effectively designing software around how lawyers in law firms work. We’re doing the opposite.”

    Proner said lawyers working through Lawhive earn as much as 2.8 times what they would make at a traditional practice, because they can handle a far greater volume of cases. Consumer lawyers often juggle 80 to 200 clients at a time, and the AI tools allow them to move through that caseload more efficiently.

    For routine legal work, such as filing an uncontested divorce application, Proner said Lawhive’s technology allows for “almost full autonomy,” with human lawyers simply reviewing the filings for quality control.

    While there have been several high profile cases of lawyers been castigated by judges and issued hefty fines for submitting filings containing erroneous case citations due to errors made by AI software, he said that Lawhive has tried to design its AI software to minimize the chances of such mistakes. When the system is uncertain about something, it flags the issue for human review, Proner said. And for more complex disputes that require more judgment calls, the AI plays a more supportive role, he said.

    After starting in the U.K., Lawhive launched in the U.S. last year and now operates in 35 states, with plans to expand nationwide. The company has offices in Austin, Texas, and is opening a new headquarters in New York.

    The company plans to use the new funding primarily for U.S. expansion, Proner said. He said the company’s ambition is to grow another five- to sevenfold this year.

    This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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    Jeremy Kahn

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  • Self-driving startup Waabi raises up to $1 billion and partners with Uber to deploy 25,000 robotaxis | Fortune

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    Waabi, the Toronto-based AI company building software to enable autonomous driving, has raised $1 billion in new funding and struck a major partnership with Uber to deploy at least 25,000 robotaxis on the ride-hailing giant’s platform.

    The deal marks a significant expansion for Waabi, which until now has focused on autonomous trucking.

    The funding consists of a $750 million Series C round led by Khosla Ventures and G2 Venture Partners, plus an additional $250 million milestone-based investment from Uber tied to the robotaxi deployment. The company says it is the largest fundraise in Canadian history.

    Other investors in the Series C include Uber, NVentures (Nvidia’s venture capital arm), Volvo Group Venture Capital, Porsche Automobil Holding SE, BlackRock, Radical Ventures, and a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

    Waabi declined to disclose its valuation following the funding round. Toronto newspaper The Globe and Mail reported in December that the company was seeking a $3 billion valuation in the Series C round.

    Waabi also declined to say where its Uber robotaxis would first be deployed or on exactly what timeline they would be rolled out.  

    Waabi represents a new breed of autonomous vehicle company—part of what some in the industry call “AV 2.0.” These companies use end-to-end AI models that learn to drive from vast amounts of data. Often a single AI model handles perception (understanding where the vehicle is on the road and what is happening around it), navigation (deciding what route to take), and action (deciding how to turn the steering wheel and whether to accelerate or brake).

    This contrasts with earlier self-driving technology, such as that originally deployed by Alphabet company Waymo, which relied on extensive hand-coded rules, many different software programs and machine learning models, each handling a single aspect of driving, as well as high-definition maps.

    Uber has recently announced a slew of robotaxi deals with vehicle manufacturers and AV 2.0 startups. In many of those deals, Uber is providing the startups with funding, as it’s doing with Waabi. Earlier this month, Uber announced a tie-up with Nuro, another startup building software for self-driving, and Lucid Motors, which aims to put 20,000 Uber robotaxis on the roads, with the first robotaxi deployed this year.

    Alongside that announcement, Uber also invested $300 million into Nuro and Lucid. The ride hailing company also has partnerships with self-driving startup Avride for robotaxis in Dallas and several other U.S. cities. And it has partnered with Waymo to allow passengers to hail Waymo self-driving cars through the Uber app in Austin, Texas, and Atlanta. In 2024, Uber invested in U.K. AV 2.0 company Wayve as part of a partnership that also aimed to test Wayve’s technology in Ubers in London. Uber also has a partnership with the Chinese internet giant Baidu to test robotaxis in London and several other international markets.

    Raquel Urtasun, the computer scientist who founded Waabi in 2021 and serves as its CEO, previously led Uber’s autonomous vehicle research lab. Uber has been involved with Waabi since its Series A venture funding round and already holds a seat on the startup’s board.

    Previously, Waabi had been working on the software that could operate autonomous trucks. In October, it announced the integration of its AI software into Volvo’s fleet of autonomous trucks, which provide autonomous freight delivery services on highways in Texas and some mining and quarrying sites in Norway and Sweden. Volvo Autonomous also has a partnership with Uber’s Uber Freight service.

    Currently, Volvo’s trucks that use Waabi’s software are using safety drivers in Texas. Urtasun said Waabi decided not to launch fully driverless trucking operations until the Volvo platform is fully validated—a decision she framed as prioritizing safety over speed. Volvo has said publicly that full validation is “just quarters away.”

    Urtasun told Fortune that the expansion to robotaxis is in no way a pivot for Waabi. The company’s “physical AI platform” can generalize across different vehicle types, geographies, and driving conditions, and the exact same AI models that drive Waabi’s trucks will also power its robotaxis, she said. 

    “The model will be aware which vehicle it’s driving, but it will be the same model,” Urtasun said. “Think of us as humans—we are not switching our brain, but we know each vehicle we are driving.”

    This approach stands in contrast to companies that have developed separate systems for different vehicle types. It also means that improvements made for trucking benefit the robotaxi system, and vice versa.

    Although Waabi and Uber did not disclose a timeline for the Waabi-powered robotaxi rollout, Urtasun said it would happen “super fast.” “Much faster than anybody can think,” she said. “Much faster than you had traditionally seen on the robotaxi side.”

    The robotaxi market is becoming intensely competitive. Waymo, owned by Google parent Alphabet, has been aggressively expanding beyond its original base in the San Francisco Bay Area. The company now operates in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Austin, and Atlanta, and has announced plans to launch in more than a dozen additional U.S. cities in 2026, including Miami, Dallas, Houston, Detroit, and Washington D.C. It’s also planning its first international launches in London and Tokyo.

    Tesla, meanwhile, launched a limited robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, last June using its Full Self-Driving software. The service initially operated with human safety monitors in the passenger seat but began offering some fully driverless rides in January. Tesla’s approach, like Waabi’s, relies on end-to-end AI trained on camera data—though Tesla uses a vision-only system without the lidar sensors most competitors employ.

    Wayve, the British company that has raised more than $1.3 billion from investors including SoftBank, Microsoft, and Nvidia, is also pursuing end-to-end AI. But unlike Waabi, Wayve has focused primarily on passenger vehicles and advanced driver-assistance systems rather than trucking.

    Waymo itself has been experimenting with end-to-end AI models and is rebuilding its own self-driving technology stack around them, as Fortune reported last year. But the company continues to rely on a combination of lidar, radar, and cameras for commercial operations.

    Waabi’s new funding, meanwhile, will go toward accelerating its commercial progress in trucking while also supporting the expansion into robotaxis, Urtasun said.

    Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, said in a statement that Waabi’s technology is “a fundamental leap forward” in how driverless technology is being developed. “Their remarkable progress in autonomous trucking and rapid expansion into robotaxis demonstrates how their technology unlocks for the first time true scale in the real world,” he said.

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    Jeremy Kahn

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  • Exclusive: AI for patent filings startup Ankar secures $20 million Series A round | Fortune

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    Two former Palantir employees hoping to use AI to transform the process for filing and managing patents have secured $20 million in investment for their London-based startup, Ankar.

    The Series A funding round for Ankar was led by venture capital firm Atomico, with participation from Index Ventures, Norrsken, and Daphni. The company had announced a £3 million ($4 million) seed round in May that was led by Index, with support from Daphni and Motier Ventures.

    Ankar was founded by Tamar Gomez and Wiem Gharbi in 2024. The pair met while working at Palantir, where they both encountered the time-consuming process of trying to obtain patents for new technology. Gomez, who has a business background, worked as a development strategist for Palantir, while Gharbi, who is a data scientist by training, worked on machine learning applications. They took the name Ankar for their new company from the name of an omniscient and powerful knight found in pre-Islamic poetry. 

    “We are trying to turn IP that has been viewed as a cost center for a very long time into more of a strategic and competitive asset that we need today in a world that is becoming more and more competitive,” Gharbi, who is Ankar’s chief technology officer, told Fortune. 

    The new funding for Ankar comes as intellectual property has become increasingly critical to corporate value. Intangible assets like IP now represent up to 90% of the value of S&P 500 companies, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization. Yet the systems for protecting those assets remain stubbornly outdated, according to Gomez and Gharbi, who say they witnessed how time-consuming and difficult it is to obtain a patent when they were working at Palantir.

    “To go from something that’s in the head of the inventor—an innovation—to something that is a bankable asset that can be leveraged by the company in the form of a patent took years, basically,” Gomez, who is Ankar’s CEO, said. “The tools to do so were incredibly legacy or just non-existent. It was like a hodgepodge of manual processes.”

    Patent attorneys can spend weeks searching multiple databases and reading patent filings to try to determine the extent to which, if any, prior patents might conflict with the new invention they were hoping to protect. Then it can take many more weeks to craft a patent application with the right arguments to try to overcome any objections from patent examiners. Securing a patent can take up to 24 months.

    Ankar wants to use large language models to streamline that process. Because these models can search for phrasing that has the same meaning, even if it doesn’t use the exact same keywords, they can quickly surface patent filings from databases that previously would have taken multiple searches and hours of reading to discover.

    The startup’s invention discovery tool searches across 150 million patent applications and 250 million scientific publications and produces reports assessing how “novel” an invention is and what claims have already been made by previously patented inventions that might be similar (what’s known in the patent world as “prior art.”) The platform helps inventors harvest their ideas and guides patent attorneys through drafting applications, including spotting gaps in existing patents where claims for a new invention might get the most traction. It also supports patent lawyers when they have to respond to possible challenges from patent examiners, giving them a single view of the entire history of the application process.

    “Patent claims are basically the scope of protection for your invention—like, what are the most important pieces of my invention that I want to protect? [Ankar’s] tool can help suggest an initial set of claims and then help the patent attorney think through potential options for broadening these claims,” Gharbi said. “So it’s no longer about just helping you kind of generate words, because we think that the value of just generating words is going to decrease over time. It’s going to become more about like, how do I generate the best qualities of the scope of protection?”

    The company has secured some notable early customers, including global cosmetics giant L’Oréal and global law firm Vorys. Ankar says that so far its customers have reported an average 40% boost in productivity, with hundreds of hours shifted to high-value strategic work.

    Jean-Yves Legendre, competitive IP intelligence manager at L’Oréal, praised Ankar in a statement, saying that the startup “understood patents, spoke our language, and adapted to our needs.”

    Many global companies, particularly in automotive, electronics, and R&D-heavy sector are redoubling efforts to protect their intellectual property, concerned that generative AI will make it easier for competitors to replicate product designs, architectures, and processes. At the same time, many companies are eager to record and protect their IP because they want to use it to train or fine-tune their own AI models to help boost productivity.

    Ankar plans to use the new funding to double its current 20-person headcount and expand its engineering, product, design, and go-to-market teams across Europe and the U.S.

    This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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    Jeremy Kahn

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  • Endear Health Announces $8M in New Funding From Optum Ventures, Blue Cross of Idaho, 8VC and Additional Strategic Partners

    Endear Health Announces $8M in New Funding From Optum Ventures, Blue Cross of Idaho, 8VC and Additional Strategic Partners

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    Endear Health is focused on reducing the hurdles older adults face while navigating an increasingly digital world through the development of innovative consumer-centric engagement solutions


    MIAMI, August 9, 2023 (Newswire.com)
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    Endear Health, a digital engagement platform built for the rapidly evolving value-based landscape, announced it has successfully closed an $8M funding round from new and current investors including Optum Ventures, Blue Cross of Idaho, 8VC and additional strategic partners. The funds will be used to accelerate the development and expansion of Endear Health’s proprietary platform, which improves the way value-based care organizations deliver digital experiences to their members.

    According to recent studies, 61% of adults aged 65 and older own a smartphone, and 73% of them use the internet daily1. Endear Health recognizes the untapped potential of technology in improving the lives of older adults and aims to bridge the digital divide by offering user-friendly solutions that cater to their unique needs. 

    With Endear Health, organizations can offer members a personalized and intuitive digital platform, purposefully designed for seniors, which integrates educational resources, core benefits, and supplemental benefits into a single location. Additionally, through a marketplace of scalable integrations with third-party digital health vendors, Endear Health empowers payors to quickly deploy innovative programs in an efficient manner ultimately resulting in better member satisfaction and improved overall health outcomes.

    “Blue Cross of Idaho remains at the forefront of closing gaps in care for Idahoans, and we are constantly seeking innovative, frictionless ways to improve the health and wellness of our members. We are excited to invest in Endear Health’s member-centric, digital solutions that connect seniors with plan benefits, programs, and even reminders for a check-up or screening.” Drew Hobby, Chief Revenue Officer for Blue Cross of Idaho

    The latest funding round represents a significant milestone for Endear Health, reflecting the growing recognition of the company’s promising impact on the healthcare industry, particularly for older adults. With the new capital injection, Endear Health is well-positioned to scale its operations, expand its team, and continue innovating its platform to meet the evolving needs of Medicare Advantage plans and risk-bearing entities nationwide. 

    1 Faverio, Share of those 65 and older who are tech users has grown in the past decade (Pew Research Center)

    About Endear Health

    Endear Health, the first digital engagement platform built for the rapidly evolving value-based landscape, is on a mission to fundamentally improve the Medicare experience. Founded in 2021 and backed by Optum Ventures, 8VC and additional strategic partners, Endear Health is focused on reducing the hurdles older adults face while navigating an increasingly digital world through development of innovative consumer-centric engagement solutions. Endear Health believes that seniors who are accustomed to receiving assistance and care across nearly all facets of their daily lives should receive that same high level of support when it comes to how they access healthcare.

    For more information, visit: endearhealth.com

    Contact

    press@endearhealth.com

    Source: Endear Health

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  • Temasek leads $135-mn funding round in omnichannel nutrition start-up HealthKart

    Temasek leads $135-mn funding round in omnichannel nutrition start-up HealthKart

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    HealthKart, a nutrition firm, has raised $135 million of growth funding led by Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings in participation with venture capital firms A91 Partners and Kae Capital. 

    The company said it will use the fresh capital towards growing its in-house D2C brands besides investing on expanding its offline distribution and international operations. The company will also use a portion of the capital to make select acquisitions. 

    HealthKart owns and operates sports nutrition brand MuscleBlaze and online health supplement brand HKVitals.  These products are distributed across online and offline channels including its own platforms, on ecommerce and quick commerce platforms, D2C websites, offline grocers and chemists, and at over 140 HealthKart-branded offline stores. 

    As per the company, its products are used by more than a million consumers every month and its annual revenue run rate has crossed Rs 1,000 crore.

    “We are delighted to partner with Temasek and A91 Partners in our mission to deliver innovative, high quality, yet affordable preventive care solutions to Indian consumers. Driving fitness and preventive health by addressing the nutritional gaps is a systemic trend which is taking off in a big way in India. With HealthKart’s R&D capabilities and omni-channel distribution infrastructure, we are excited to lead the way,” Sameer Maheshwari, Founder & CEO, HealthKart said. 

    The company as founded as HealthKartPlus in 2011 by Prashant Tandon and Maheshwari. In 2015, it spun off its pharmaceutical vertical into a separate company named 1MG Technologies. Maheshwari continued to lead HealthKart while 1MG, headed by Tandon, was acquired by conglomerate Tata Group in a $450 million deal. 

    Avendus Capital acted as the exclusive financial advisor to HealthKart for the transaction. 

    The investment is welcome news to the gloom and doom of the start-up ecosystem that has been reeling under a severe funding crunch. Several start-ups in India have laid off employees in the past few months as VCs have become cautious of their investments. Healthtech start-up Healthifyme was the latest to join the layoff bandwagon, sacking about 150 employees. Recently, homegrown short video platform Josh’s parent firm, VerSe also fired 150 employees. Other start-ups that have asked people to leave include BYJU’S, Unacademy, Vedantu,Ola,  Chargebee, MPL, Meesho, Cars24 and Udaan. 

    Also read: Well-being of laid off employees a top priority: OYO boss Ritesh Agarwal

    Also read: Fintech start-up SanKash to hire 500 people in the next 6 months

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  • A Parent Media Co. Inc. Closes Strategic Investment Round With TriWest Capital Partners With Valuation at Over CDN $600 Million

    A Parent Media Co. Inc. Closes Strategic Investment Round With TriWest Capital Partners With Valuation at Over CDN $600 Million

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    Press Release
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    Jun 22, 2022


    CALGARY, Alberta, June 22, 2022 (Newswire.com)
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    A Parent Media Co. Inc. (“APMC” or the “Company“), owner of kids’ Safe Streaming™ services, Kidoodle.TV®, Glitch+, and Safe Exchange Inc., has announced the successful closing of an equity financing (“Financing“) with TriWest Capital Partners (“TriWest“), one of Canada’s leading private equity firms. APMC has raised over CDN $80 million of investment capital and is now worth over CDN $600 million.

    In conjunction with the financing, TriWest’s Managing Director, Jon Spencer, joined APMC’s Board of Directors. “We are very pleased to welcome Jon Spencer to the Board and look forward to his insight and contributions to the Board’s deliberations,” said Michael Lowe, Dad, founder, and Chief Executive Officer of APMC. “We feel that this alignment validates the achievements we have made to date and our commitment to families globally in a time when protections for children are needed the most.“

    “Management’s vision has allowed APMC to build industry-leading ad technology to provide solutions to open media platform problems, all while prioritizing the protection of children in a rapidly growing and changing industry. TriWest is excited to be part of the Company’s next phase of growth and is proud to partner with a team committed to the family values APMC represents,” noted Jon Spencer. 

    APMC’s growth in recent years has been closely followed by Alberta’s Minister of Jobs, Economy and Innovation, Doug Schweitzer. “I’ve previously noted that this Calgary-based entertainment company could be the next “Unicorn” in Alberta. I continue to be impressed by the success we have witnessed from this company and its role in diversifying the economy, employing highly trained personnel in tech and creative industries, and expanding economic opportunities. This is exactly what we hoped to achieve as we work to rebuild and diversify the Alberta economy.“

    The TriWest financing was initiated by Fred Mannix Jr., “This is a business for positive impact. As a father, it was important to me to stand behind the strong work ethic and commitment to safety for children that this company represents.” 

    “As we face a period of time where child safety should be the most important conversation, we are committed to shifting the narrative,” said Uncle, founder and APMC President, Neil Gruninger. “We are thrilled to have TriWest join the Kidoodle.TV family and worked hard to align with a finance partner that understands not only the opportunity but that families should come first. That’s part of our DNA. Our family ‘title’ is deliberate because what we do for the future of our children matters in this world.”

    About APMC and Kidoodle.TV®

    A Parent Media Co. Inc. is a family-based media and technology company focused on providing innovative solutions to consumers and brands, including Kidoodle.TV®, Glitch+, and Safe Exchange Inc. Kidoodle.TV is a Safe Streaming™ service committed to providing children with a safe alternative to stream their favorite TV shows and movies. Available in over 160 countries and territories on thousands of connected devices, Kidoodle.TV provides peace of mind, with every show* vetted by caring people who are committed to Safe and Free Streaming for Kids™. Kidoodle.TV is available on iOS, Android, Apple TV, Fire TV, LG, Samsung, VIDAA-enabled Hisense TVs, Chromecast, Roku, Vizio SmartCast Amazon, Jio, Xfinity X1, Connected TVs, HTML5 Web, and many other streaming media devices, including Miko 3. Kidoodle.TV is certified by the kidSAFE® Seal Program and is the proud recipient of the Mom’s Choice Award®, a Stevie® Award, platinum winner of the Best Mobile App Award, and Parents’ Picks Award – Best Elementary Products. Visit www.kidoodle.tv to learn more. 

    *Content availability varies by location.

    Facebook: facebook.com/KidoodleTV 

    Twitter: twitter.com/kidoodleTV

    Instagram: instagram.com/kidoodletv/

    Media Contact: media@kidoodle.tv   

    About TriWest Capital Partners

    Founded in 1998 and based in Calgary, Alberta, TriWest is one of Canada’s leading private equity firms, having raised over C $1.4 billion in committed capital through six funds. TriWest has successfully invested in 44 companies across a broad cross-section of the economy in partnership with their management teams. We work closely with our management partners, together proactively putting in place a strategy that maximizes growth potential and value creation by emphasizing operational excellence, prudent governance and an efficient capital structure. The principals of TriWest have significant operational and financial expertise, making us effective partners in creating shareholder value. For more information: www.triwest.ca
     

    Source: A Parent Media Co. Inc.

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