Icertis, the CLM company, has today announced the closing of an $80m Series F round at a valuation of over $2.8 billion. Icertis has now raised over $280m, and the current financing nearly triples the valuation of its Series E round in July 2019, the company said.
The move underlines the growing interest in the CLM space among investors, who see this as a legal tech category with huge potential for market expansion.
The $2.8 billion valuation is also huge….making it clearly a legal tech unicorn of sorts, (although, it launched back in 2009, so it’s a very long way from being anything close to a startup – see note below. It’s also interesting to consider what happens next in the medium-term…..one would guess that a public listing is where this is all heading eventually. We’ll have to wait and see. But, AL could certainly see this kind of momentum turning into an IPO in a year or two.)
[ Note: In business, a unicorn is a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion. The term was coined in 2013 by venture capitalist Aileen Lee, choosing the mythical animal to represent the statistical rarity of such successful ventures, (from Wikipedia). ]
One would hope that this kind of investment reflects a growing interest from inhouse teams to really get to grips with their contracts, which is good news far beyond this particular investment.
As explored by this site recently – see ‘How Did CLM Become the Hottest Segment in Legal Tech‘ – CLM is seeing a wide range of developments, in part led by the application of NLP software – something that Icertis is also doing.
It bodes well for legal tech as a whole, as if the clients are more focused on contract management and legal data this should have a healthy follow-through effect on other areas.
The news also follows that of fellow CLM company Evisort gaining a fresh investment of $35m, taking it to over $55m funding in total, just a couple of weeks ago.
The latest round for Icertis was led by existing investor B Capital Group, with participation from Greycroft, Meritech Capital Partners, Premji Invest, PSP Growth, and e.ventures. The company will use this funding to invest in accelerating its AI and Blockchain development, expanding its sales and marketing footprint, and building out its global partner network.
In addition, Icertis added two distinguished business executives to its Board of Directors. The new independent Directors, Penny Pritzker, founder and Chairman of PSP Partners, and former U.S. Secretary of Commerce in the Obama Administration; and Karyn Smith, general counsel at Twilio Inc., will bring integral perspectives and expertise as the company’s business continues to grow rapidly.
Samir Bodas, CEO and Co-founder, Icertis, said: ‘As our company and category enter an exciting new phase with the closing of this new round, Monish and I are also thrilled to welcome Penny and Karyn aboard Team Icertis. We’re eminently well-positioned to continue our undisputed leadership. Icertis is clearly out in front and executing on our vision to transform contracting – the foundation of commerce – and this is just the beginning!’
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