AI company Luminance raises $40 mln as contracts tech investment booms

LG Chem

02/04/2024 22:07

By Sara Merken
       April 2 (Reuters) - Legal technology company Luminance,
which sells software to automate the contracts process for legal
teams, said on Tuesday that it has raised $40 million in a new
funding round led by Santa Monica-based venture firm March
Capital. 
    National Grid Partners and the London-based law firm
Slaughter and May were also among the investors in the Series B
round of funding for Cambridge, England-based Luminance.
    Luminance says its technology automates the process of
creating, negotiating and analyzing contracts and other legal
documents.
    Contracts have been a longtime focus of legal technology
developers, and products have increasingly incorporated AI.
DraftWise, Spellbook and RobinAI are other AI contracts-focused
companies that have raised fresh capital in 2024.
    Eleanor Lightbody, CEO of Luminance, said the company is
different from competitors because it built its own large
language model that has been exposed to millions of legal
contracts. 
    The eight-year-old company at first sold its technology
mostly to law firm customers, including Clyde & Co, Lightbody
said. Luminance hit an "inflection point" two years ago when it
also started selling to corporate customers, which have driven
recent growth, she said.
    Koch Industries, Hitachi, Liberty Mutual and LG Chem are
customers, according to the company. 
    Luminance, founded in 2015, raised $10 million in a 2019
funding round that valued the company at $100 million, it said
at the time. A spokesperson said Tuesday that the company is not
disclosing the current valuation. 
    The company, which Lightbody said has about 150 employees,
will use the new funding in part to expand further in the United
States. 

 (Reporting by Sara Merken)