ROSS Intelligence Gains $8.7m in Major Series A Funding

Legal AI research pioneer, ROSS Intelligence, has today announced an $8.7m Series A funding round, adding to its previous $4.3 million Seed round, making it one of the largest total fundings of any legal AI company at $13m.

The latest round was led by iNovia Capital with participation by Comcast Ventures Catalyst Fund, Y Combinator Continuity Fund, Real Ventures, Dentons’ NextLaw Labs and Apple’s deep learning lead, Nicolas Pinto, who invested as an angel.

Co-founder and CEO, Andrew Arruda told Artificial Lawyer that the huge injection of capital would go toward significant expansion of staff, marketing efforts and perhaps most importantly, rolling out whole new practice areas under US law for the legal AI research service.

‘We are going to expand engineering, sales, marketing and we are also going to expand into other areas of the law beyond bankruptcy and IP. ROSS will be expanding into employment and labour law, for example,’ said Arruda.

He added that they were also doing training of their AI research system in Canadian law, but for now the main focus will continue to be the US.

Arruda added that they are also looking at how they can add extra services on top of the core ROSS search capability.

‘Like Google we have started with search, but we may add other tools around that in the future,’ Arruda noted.

All of this growth will certainly be possible now, given the $8.7m additional investment, allowing the company to expand and scale up across the US.

Arruda also commented to Artificial Lawyer that the company has only been in full operation for two years and as far as he is concerned ‘it’s still day one’ and there was much more to come.

Toronto Mayor John Tory and University of Toronto President Meric Gertler cut the ribbon of ROSS North, ROSS Intelligence’s AI R&D HQ along with the ROSS cofounders and representatives from the University of Toronto.

The company added in a formal statement, that 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, Sidley Austin, Bryan Cave, Carlton Fields, Sedgwick, Kobre & Kim, BakerHostetler, K&L Gates, Fennemore Craig and Womble Carlyle.

ROSS Intelligence Cofounders, pictured L/R: Pargles Dall’Oglio, Andrew Arruda (CEO) and Jimoh Ovbiagele (CTO). [Photo Credit: Geoff Vendeville, U of T News]

Karam Nijjar, partner at iNovia Capital, said: ‘[Our] 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.’

Michael Seibel, CEO of Y Combinator, added: ‘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.’

The company has also announced today that enterprise sales 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 Rodriquez, 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.

Over the last year, ROSS Intelligence has also grown its staff located in San Francisco and New York and launched its AI R&D Headquarters in Toronto, Canada.

If you don’t already know all about ROSS, then please check out the video below.