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Venture Firm LegalTech Fund Closes Second Fund With $110 Million
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By Marc Vartabedian, WSJ Pro
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Good day. LegalTech Fund, a venture firm that exclusively invests in legal technology companies, closed its second fund, a $110 million vehicle, doubling down on its thesis that artificial intelligence will reshape the legal profession by doing the heavy lifting previously reserved for junior lawyers.
The sophomore fundraise comes as a flurry of legal tech funding deals have closed in recent weeks and a torrent of investment capital has targeted legal-tech startups leveraging AI over the past couple of years.
LegalTech Fund was founded by two entrepreneurs who had never worked in the legal field but believed emerging AI tools had the potential to overhaul the industry. Since the pair raised their first $29 million fund in 2021, they said law firms, corporate legal departments and consumers have adopted the tech. That swift adoption helped them raise the larger second fund, said Zach Posner, the Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based firm’s co-founder and managing partner.
AI’s ability to summarize large texts and find specific information when queried by a user make it well-suited for use by lawyers who must review reams of legal documents. The technology’s ability to assemble boilerplate legal agreements can allow everyday people to use AI services in lieu of a pricey attorney, Posner said.
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And now on to the news...
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Market researchers Morningstar and its PitchBook unit recently reported on the explosive growth in evergreen private-equity vehicles. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Secondary market. Everyday investors are paying above-market prices for private-equity fund stakes, fueling questions about whether these investments are likely to pay off.
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A flood of money into so-called evergreen funds—vehicles that offer wealthy investors access to alternative assets such as private equity and private credit—has helped bail out private-markets managers in the postpandemic years, when they have struggled to raise money from institutions, their traditional funding source.
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Private-markets managers launched more than 250 of these funds since 2022, including a record 77 so far this year, and they have raised $450 billion in total, according to a recent report from PitchBook and Morningstar.
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Wall Street Blows Past Bubble Worries to Supercharge AI Spending Frenzy
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Not long ago, Blue Owl Capital was an upstart investment firm that lent money to midsize U.S. companies such as Sara Lee Frozen Bakery. These days, the firm is financing massive data centers costing tens of billions of dollars for the likes of Meta and Oracle—a sign of just how quickly Wall Street has become the enabler of America’s artificial-intelligence boom. Fund managers such as Blue Owl amassed trillions of dollars of investing firepower and have been hunting for big deals where they can put that money to work. They found slim pickings for years until a perfect match appeared in AI, which has provided a bigger target than anything in history due to the vast sums tech companies need to ramp up computing power.
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European Rare-Earths Plant Shows Challenge of Curbing China’s Grip
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Europe is trying to get itself on the global rare-earths map, and a new facility on Russia’s border is its opening bid. The city of Narva in Estonia is now host to Europe’s biggest production plant for the kinds of rare-earth magnets needed in electric cars and wind turbines. It is part of Europe’s push to secure a foothold in a global supply chain dominated at every step by China. The problem: Even at the new factory’s initial planned capacity of 2,000 metric tons of permanent magnet material, the plant will produce a fraction of what analysts estimate European manufacturers need.
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Alembic Technologies, a San Francisco-based causal AI decision engine for enterprises, scored $145 million in Series B funding. Prysm Capital and Accenture led the round, which included participation from Silver Lake Waterman, Liquid 2 Ventures, Friends & Family Capital and others.
Vend Park, a technology and operations company that helps commercial real estate owners manage and monetize parking, said it has raised $17.5 million in Series A funding. The funding will accelerate Vend's expansion into major U.S. markets, advance its AI-powered product roadmap, and fuel hiring across sales, engineering, and customer success. Blue Heron Capital led the round.
OnRamp, a Boston-based company with an intelligent customer onboarding and engagement platform, said it has raised $15 million, completing its Series A funding led by new investor Koch Disruptive Technologies. This brings the company's total funding to $27 million, OnRamp said. OnRamp will use this funding to advance AI-powered capabilities for its customer engagement platform, scale its team, and deepen its roots in Boston's technology ecosystem, opening 6,000 square feet of office space in early 2026.
Deductive AI, a startup involved in artificial intelligence-powered root cause analysis and resolution, said it raised $7.5 million in seed funding. Deductive said it is introducing a new generation of AI SRE agents that learn from real-world incidents to automatically detect failures, diagnose root causes, and help engineers remediate software issues in minutes instead of hours.
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DOMINIC BUGATTO
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