Robin AI has raised $26m Series B funding led by Temasek, a global investment company headquartered in Singapore, as it looks to grow in the United States and Asia Pacific. Other investors include QuantumLight, Plural and AFG Partners.
Robin AI was founded in 2019 by Richard Robinson, a lawyer at Clifford Chance, and James Clough, a machine learning research scientist at Imperial College. It leverages generative AI to automate and speed up the process of drafting and negotiating contracts, as well as extracting information from across contract repositories. Its legal copilot, available as a Microsoft Word add-in, can, we’re told, cut the time it takes to review contracts by 85%.
Robin AI became one of Anthropic’s launch partners for the release of their Large Language Model Claude. Claude 2.1 allows much longer prompts than other LLMs (around 150,000 words in each prompt), a key benefit for analysing long and complex legal documents. It operates a hybrid model that combines the Claude LLM with its own proprietary contract data (from over 2 million contracts) and machine learning techniques to read and understand contracts. An in-house team of legal professionals, or lawyers-in-the-loop, helps to further refine the model. Unlike many other legal AI products that are in beta or hidden behind waiting lists, anyone can try out a free version of the copilot at www.robinai.com.
The funding will allow Robin AI to expand 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 to expand its existing team of AI and machine learning experts.
CEO and co-founder Richard Robinson, who has relocated to New York to support the US expansion, said: “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 customers include Pepsico, PwC, Yum! Brands, AlbaCore Capital Group, and BlueEarth Capital.
Carina Namih, Partner at Plural, said, “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.”