Why Did Ayfie Do The Inspector Deal With iCONECT?

Last night iCONECT, the eDiscovery company, announced it had bought the ‘gold copy’ of the Inspector product from doc analysis pioneer Ayfie. This includes ‘all subcomponents and patent licences in perpetuity for an undisclosed sum’. Artificial Lawyer asked Ayfie why they had done this deal – especially after such a tumultuous period that has seen them close offices, change management, and list on the stock exchange in Norway?

This is what Ayfie’s latest CEO, Herman Sjøberg, who recently joined from Cap Gemini, had to say.

Why sell the ‘gold copy’ of Inspector?

‘iCONECT wanted access to our codebase to further develop their offerings. We still own the IP, and will continue to use Inspector technology. The money involved will help us further develop our own platform.

We create technology and sell it, we see it as a win-win.

Is the strategy now to focus more on Locator? I.e. you will be mainly a search company now?

No. We’re evolving our platform into an Insight Engine. We are integrating the Inspector technology into the Ayfie platform. This will result in a product that combines search and extractions together that are fully aligned with our existing customers and market needs.

For example, in the new 3.0 release our customers can conduct document review online within Ayfie Locator and build chronological timelines. This development was driven by several of our law firm customers.

How has business been generally?

2020 was a transitional year for Ayfie. I’m pleased to announce that the company now has a strong balance and achieved profitability in H1 2021. Development activities have been consolidated in Oslo and we’re now rolling out a new release to our customers. For more details please see our Financial report H1 2021.’

And here’s an excerpt from that data. 1 NOK = $0.12. E.g. 2021 H1 total revenue of NOK 17,854,000 = $2,079,571

Data from Ayfie.

So, there you go. Ayfie is still very much with us, it’s just been doing a lot of restructuring over the last couple of years. And, they’ve got a new CEO who is leading things. This site looks forward to seeing them grow steadily again, now that things have stabilised.