PRESS RELEASE; SAN FRANCISCO, October 11, 2017 — ROSS Intelligence, the leading artificial intelligencecompany in the legal industry, today announced an $8.7 million Series A funding round led by iNovia Capital with participation by Comcast Ventures Catalyst Fund, Y Combinator Continuity Fund, Real Ventures, Dentons’ NextLaw Labs, Kima Ventures and Apple’s deep learning lead, Nicolas Pinto. This 8.7 million funding round adds to ROSS Intelligence’s 4.3 million Seed round which was also led by iNovia Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, Real Ventures, Denton’s NextLaw Labs, Hedgewood, Griver Capital Group, ACE & Company, The Family, and LinkedIn’s former Director of Engineering, Diego Basch.
The company is also happy to announce today that enterprise sale executive Scott Sperling, WeWork’s former Head of Sales, has joined the team as its Vice-President of Sales. Sperling will be leading the expansion of ROSS Intelligence’s sales efforts across the United States. Additionally, Daniel Rodriguez, legal education trailblazer and outgoing Dean of Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, will be joining the ROSS Intelligence team in an advisory capacity focusing on ROSS’ law school expansion and access to justice initiatives.
Recently celebrating its 2nd birthday, ROSS Intelligence pioneered bringing modern applications of artificial intelligence to the legal industry. The company was founded in 2015 by Andrew Arruda, Jimoh Ovbiagele and Pargles Dall’Oglio at the University of Toronto, where recent AI breakthroughs were pioneered. Today, lawyers are using ROSS Intelligence across almost every state in the United States. Lawyers rely on ROSS to streamline their legal research processes, from their initial searches to monitoring the law around the clock to ensure they never miss out on new developments in the law, which can make a critical difference to their cases.
ROSS Intelligence’s rapid growth has been driven by increased pressure within the legal industry to streamline efficiencies via the use of modern technology. Clients of ROSS Intelligence include industry-leading law firms such as Latham & Watkins, Dentons, Shearman & Sterling, Bryan Cave, Carlton Fields, Sedgwick, Kobre & Kim, BakerHostetler, K&L Gates, Fennemore Craig and Womble Carlyle.
Over the last year, ROSS Intelligence has grown its staff located in San Francisco and New York and launched its AI R&D Headquarters in Toronto, Canada, the AI world capital. Building on its momentum, ROSS Intelligence will be using the additional financing to continue to expand its current offerings into other practice areas (with Labor & Employment law coming next), launch new product lines outside of legal research, accelerate product growth and innovation, and invest in expanding sales and marketing resources.
“Our goal is to continue to bring the power of artificial intelligence to the legal industry allowing lawyers to enhance and scale their abilities and do more than ever before humanly possible,” says Andrew Arruda, CEO of ROSS Intelligence. “This latest financing gives us the ability to continue our aggressive expansion, add great talent to our growing world-class team, innovate rapidly, and deliver on our vision into the future.”
“As demonstrated by their technological success and commercial leadership in the legal space, ROSS Intelligence is clearly the market leader in the development of artificial intelligence applications for the law,” said Karam Nijjar, partner at iNovia Capital. “iNovia’s participation from the very earliest days of ROSS Intelligence, when the founders worked out of a basement of Toronto, Canada, has allowed us to help shape and guide the company as it’s grown from success to success. We’re thrilled to be leading this Series A financing round to provide the ROSS Intelligence team with the firepower to rapidly scale their technical and sales expertise while expanding into the Fortune 500 legal market and beyond.”
“As an investor in great category-leading companies, we pride ourselves in identifying the companies who will bring transformative change to their verticals. ROSS Intelligence is challenging the methods of the traditional legal industry with their transformational NLP and machine learning-fueled approach,” says Kai Bond, Principal of Comcast Ventures Catalyst Fund. “We look forward to supporting this talented and experienced team deliver a product that creates efficiencies that the legal community has long craved as well as resources and analysis for an entire industry.”
“Y Combinator invested in ROSS Intelligence as part of YC’s Summer 2015 batch because we believed that artificial intelligence would play a significant role in the future of the legal profession,” said Michael Seibel, CEO of Y Combinator. “The ROSS Intelligence team has proven there is demand for modern AI applications in the legal industry, and today’s investment round is a testament to their progress.”
ROSS Intelligence’s mission is to enable lawyers to do more than ever before humanly possible. ROSS Intelligence is developing AI technology that can read and answer questions about the law, enabling lawyers to enhance and scale their services. ROSS Intelligence’s customers include many of the top law firms and corporate legal departments, both in the United States and abroad. ROSS Intelligence transforms lawyers’ workflows with artificial intelligence. ROSS Intelligence operates out of Toronto, San Francisco, and New York. For more information, visit www.rossintelligence.com.
Join the leading minds in legal tech and get the latest news and updates on the law, legal technology, artificial intelligence, and much more.
