Luminance, a legal tech startup, secures $75M in funding from late Mike Lynch.

The rapid advancement of generative AI in understanding complex texts has been a game-changer, especially for startups diving into the intricate world of legal documents. It's no surprise that the legal tech sector has seen a surge in activity over the past year, fueled by these AI breakthroughs. Just last week, Eudia, a legal tech startup, secured a whopping $105 million. Meanwhile, London's Genie AI raised €16 million last year, and U.S.-based Harvey nabbed a $300 million round led by Sequoia. Lawhive also pulled in $40 million to target "main street" U.S. lawyers. Now, joining this impressive lineup is Luminance, which proudly labels itself as "legal-grade" AI. Luminance claims to excel in accurately analyzing legal issues and contracts. They've just raised $75 million in a Series C funding round, led by Point72 Private Investments. This round stands out as one of the biggest capital raises for a pure-play legal AI company in the U.K. and Europe. In the last 12 months, Luminance has raised over $115 million, bringing their total to $165 million. Founded by Cambridge academics Adam Guthrie and Dr. Graham Sills, Luminance was initially seed-funded by the late Dr. Mike Lynch, the founder of Autonomy, who tragically passed away last year. Luminance's "Panel of Judges" AI system helps businesses automate and enhance their contract processes, from creation to negotiation and post-execution analysis. Their flagship product, Lumi Go, uses a proprietary large language model (LLM) to allow customers to send draft agreements to a counterparty, with the AI auto-negotiating on their behalf. Instead of relying on a GPT (generative pre-trained transformer), Luminance uses an LPT (legal pre-trained transformer) trained on over 150 million verified legal documents. Many of these documents are not publicly available, giving Luminance a competitive edge. Unlike other legal tech startups that build on general-purpose LLMs, Luminance's approach is tailored for lawyers. "It's a domain-specialized AI that is built with lawyers in mind [...] They need to understand that the outputs have been validated and can be trusted, and that's exactly what our specialized AI can achieve," said Eleanor Lightbody, the startup's CEO who took over from the founders after the Series A round. Lightbody emphasized that the platform was designed with the understanding that different models excel in different areas. "What you want is to have a mixed model approach, where the models can check each other's 'homework,' and you can get the most accurate and the most transparent answers," she explained. This approach, she claims, sets Luminance apart from its competitors, allowing clients to use the platform throughout the entire contract life cycle. Luminance boasts over 700 clients in more than 70 countries, including big names like AMD, Hitachi, LG Chem, SiriusXM, Rolls-Royce, and Lamborghini. Their North American team has tripled in size after opening offices in San Francisco, Dallas, and Toronto, and expanding their U.S. headquarters in New York. The Series C round also saw investments from Forestay Capital, RPS Ventures, and Schroders Capital, along with existing investors March Capital, National Grid Partners, and Slaughter and May.

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