In a figure that will prompt further questions over how long the current level of investment in startups can be sustained, Eigen Technologies has completed a $37m (£29m) Series B funding round co-led by Lakestar and Dawn Capital, with participation from Temasek and Goldman Sachs Growth Equity. By size it is in the top 10% of European Series B fundraises.
This brings the total funding raised by Eigen to $55m (£43m) following the company’s Series A round in June 2018, which was notably co-led by Goldman Sachs and Temasek.
Founded in 2014, Eigen’s natural language processing technology automates the extraction of unstructured, qualitative data. It counts Linklaters, Goldman and ING among its clients.
Since closing its Series A round, Eigen says that it has more than doubled its headcount, grown its recurring revenue sixfold, and expanded its client base to include over a quarter of the worlds G-SIB (global systemically important banks) institutions. The UK-founded company recently unveiled Eigen 3.0., which widens out its solution to the broader investor community such as hedge funds and asset managers.
The new capital will be used to further accelerate this growth, with significant investments across the company in both its technical and commercial teams. The company says it will also double down on its commitment to be a truly transatlantic business, with additional senior management roles based out of New York in order to better serve and benefit from both the North American and European markets.
Founded by Dr. Lewis Z. Liu and Jonathan Feuer, Eigen’s technology is currently deployed for use cases as diverse as bank capital optimization (RWA), LIBOR repapering, asset-backed securities analysis, portfolio origination, and complex regulatory compliance exercises such as Dodd-Frank, Basel III, and Solvency II.
Liu said: “When we founded Eigen five years ago, I wanted build a research-led transatlantic business. Since the Series A we have made great progress by massively scaling the company, expanding our client base, and integrating cutting-edge machine learning techniques into our NLP product. This new round will allow us to supercharge our growth.”
This week automated time keeping provider Ping raised over $13m in private equity funding and BRYTER raised $6m.
As we wrote in October, investment into UK legal technology start-ups reached £61m in 2018, more than doubling the £22m invested in the previous 12 months, according to the Legaltech Start-up Report 2019 in October. The report by Thomson Reuters and Legal Geek also revealed that startups have received more than that sum already in 2019.
The report shows that investment in UK legaltech start-ups has risen dramatically over the last five years – less than £1.5m was invested in the whole of 2014, according to the report’s findings.
Legaltech start-ups received at least £62m through the first nine months of 2019, surpassing the 2018 total.
A spokesperson for Eigen told us: “What’s important is to look at who is investing and their approach. It’s worth noting that Lakestar and Dawn are top draw investors for B2B software companies and highly experienced in the area. They wouldn’t invest such a large amount if we didn’t have a track record of both winning clients and generating revenue.”
See also:
https://legaltechnology.com/latest-news/eigen-who-the-startup-with-13m-world-domination-plans/
