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Venture Appetite Grows for Legal-Tech Startups
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By Marc Vartabedian, WSJ Pro
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Good day. Legal-tech startups have been on a fundraising tear this year, raising a record $2.5 billion in venture funding globally through Monday, surpassing the full-year totals for last year and the boom year of 2021, according to analytics firm Crunchbase.
Venture investors are betting big that the legal sector is well-suited for infusions of artificial intelligence to juice firms’ efficiency. The latest example is San Francisco-based Harvey, which says its 700 customers across 58 countries use its software for contract analysis, due diligence, compliance and litigation.
Harvey on Monday said it raised a €50 million, or about $59 million, investment from EQT Growth, the growth investing division of Swedish private-equity firm EQT AB. The deal is an extension of a June Series E round led by Kleiner Perkins and Coatue Management in which Harvey raised $300 million at a $5 billion valuation. Harvey is also backed by investors including Sequoia Capital and GV.
Dominik Stein, a partner and head of EQT Growth Advisory Team, said his firm’s European roots could aid Harvey’s expansion, including in Europe.
Success in the hot sector is far from certain. Harvey, for instance, faces competition from deep-pocketed rivals including Filevine, a Salt Lake City-based legal operating intelligence platform. Last month, Filevine raised a $400 million financing led by Insight Partners.
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And now on to the news...
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Shayne Coplan, left, and Jeffrey Sprecher, the CEOs of Polymarket and Intercontinental Exchange, respectively, at an event in Washington last week. PHOTO: KENT NISHIMURA/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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NYSE owner near deal for $2 billion stake in Polymarket. New York Stock Exchange owner Intercontinental Exchange is in talks to invest $2 billion in Polymarket in a deal that could value the popular crypto-based prediction market at as much as $10 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
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The deal could come as soon as Tuesday and is expected to value the business at between $8 billion and $10 billion, they said, cautioning that the details are still in flux.
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The investment by one of the world’s leading exchange operators, which has a market value of more than $90 billion, could enhance the betting platform’s credibility and aid its efforts to re-establish a U.S. presence.
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How AMD Mounted a Challenge in the AI Chip Wars
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When Lisa Su took over as chief executive of chip company Advanced Micro Devices in 2014, the company’s market value was just under $3 billion. Today, it is worth more than $330 billion, a more-than-hundredfold increase that reflects how deftly AMD has pivoted from a strategy of mainly producing graphics cards for gaming and personal-computer processors to more tightly focusing on the data-center chips that power the artificial-intelligence revolution. AMD’s share price rose 24% on Monday after the company announced a partnership with OpenAI, maker of the popular consumer AI model ChatGPT. Under the terms of the deal, OpenAI will buy tens of thousands of AMD
chips to power 6 gigawatts of computing capacity for inference functions, which allow AI models to respond to user queries.
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Anthropic and IBM Partner in Bid for AI Business Customers
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Anthropic is working with International Business Machines to make its artificial-intelligence models available inside IBM’s software, the two companies said Tuesday, in an attempt at uniting the AI startup with an IT stalwart. IBM’s latest integrated developer environment, or IDE, is the first product in which Anthropic’s flagship Claude AI models will be directly available. The tool is aimed at software engineers working for large businesses, and helps to automate development tasks like modernizing code.
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Tech Live: Where Tech’s Biggest Headlines Are Discussed
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WSJ Tech Live is The Wall Street Journal’s premier technology event series. Over three days, our journalists will sit down with top executives, founders and policymakers to explore the most pressing topics of today. It all takes place across two global destinations for innovation and investment: California and Qatar.
Register your interest to be part of this unique live journalism experience and receive access to exclusive discounted rates on your pass.
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Funds
Crystal Venture Partners closed its debut fund with $33 million in commitments to invest in startups building technology that powers insurance, risk and resilience. To date, the New York-based firm has made six investments through the fund.
New York-based Sugar Free Capital raised $32 million for its inaugural fund to invest in technical founders.
People
Digital asset technology startup EDX Markets appointed David Olsson as chief commercial officer. He most recently served as global head of institutional sales at Kraken.
Exits
Itron agreed to acquire Urbint, which uses AI to predict threats to workers and infrastructure, for $325 million.
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Harvey, a San Francisco-based provider of domain-specific AI for law firms and professional service providers, scored a €50 million investment from EQT Growth.
FurtherAI, a San Francisco-based insurance AI startup, landed $25 million in Series A funding. Andreessen Horowitz led the round, which included participation from Nexus Venture Partners and Y Combinator.
ConCntric, a San Francisco-based platform for preconstruction management, secured $10 million in Series A financing. Led by 53 Stations, the round included contributions from Argonautic Ventures and others.
Akua, a Bogota-based agentic payments platform for emerging markets, closed an $8.5 million seed round co-led by Flourish Ventures and Cathay Latam.
Bettani Farms, a Berkeley, Calif.-based dairy-free cheese startup formerly known as Climax Foods, picked up $6.5 million in Series A funding led by S2G Investments. The company also appointed Sandeep Patel as chief executive and chairman.
Agio Ratings, a London-based rating agency focused on the digital asset market, completed a $6 million funding round led by AlbionVC.
Janta Power, a Dallas-based 3D solar tower technology provider, was seeded with a $5.5 million investment. MaC Venture Capital led the funding, which included participation from Collab Capital.
Vycarb, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based carbon-management startup, closed a $5 million seed round led by Twynam.
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Podcaster Alex Cooper last year signed a lucrative deal with Sirius and introduced a line of beverages under the brand Unwell Hydration. PHOTO: CINDY ORD/GETTY IMAGES
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