9fin, an information and analysis platform focused on debt capital markets – and which includes several useful features for lawyers (see below) – has gained $50m in a Series B funding round. The new funding will enable 9fin to ‘invest further in its AI technology, grow its analytics team, and accelerate its expansion in the US,’ they said.
Since its Series A+ round in 2022, it has achieved 400% group-wide ARR growth, with its US business growing at an even faster rate. The company has also grown to 240 employees and recently doubled the size of its tech team, driving increases in product development speed, they added.
All well and good. But what does it do for lawyers? Quite a bit, is the answer. At present they are ‘trusted by 11 of the top 12 law firms in European high yield’.
Here are some of the things it can do for those law firms working in capital markets, especially on the debt side:
- ‘Covenant analysis – Provide the best service to your clients by helping them stay ahead of sponsor trends. With 9fin’s covenant analysis, it’s easy to identify ‘market standard’ activity and discover aggressive new terms.
- Find precedent drafting in seconds – Say goodbye to manually digging through static PDFs — our search function allows lawyers to scan through thousands of documents, including preliminary and final OMs, in seconds.
- Deal Comparison – Make informed decisions faster with our covenant capacity tool. Getting up-to-speed couldn’t be easier — build basket and covenant capacity comparisons, assess debt capacity estimates, and view restricted payments and investment capacity for any deal.
- Prediction capabilities – Get the intel you need ahead of the crowd to help you make the best decisions. We use data to predict refinancing, restructuring, and capital markets activity 12 months before it happens.’
So, there you go. If you’re in the capital markets arena then this may be of interest to you. Core areas of focus include: leveraged loans, distressed debt, CLOs, private credit, and asset-backed finance.
The company added that ‘9fin was the first information provider to integrate generative AI into its platform, using it to provide agentic Q&A tools, real-time market updates, and advanced search capabilities’.
Steven Hunter, co-founder and CEO of 9fin said: ‘Debt markets are the biggest overlooked asset class in the world and yet they still rely on technology and information sources straight out of the 1980s – opaque, slow and messy.
‘We started 9fin to give professionals in the market a data edge, with smarter, faster intelligence. I’m really proud of the product, team and company culture we’ve built so far at 9fin, and we’re just getting started. There’s a huge opportunity to build the #1 global provider of debt market analytics, and bring debt markets into the AI age.’
And Huss El-Sheikh, Co-founder and CTO of 9fin, concluded: ‘From the moment we started building at our kitchen table, 9fin has pioneered the use of AI in debt capital markets, setting a new industry standard. By investing in the best product and engineering talent, we’ve dramatically increased product velocity, delivering capabilities to give our customers the best workflows, tools and insights, and helping them navigate easily through complex financial markets.’
The round was led by Highland Europe, with participation from existing investors Spark Capital, Redalpine, Seedcamp, 500 Startups and Ilavska Vuillermoz Capital.
Overall, although this is also clearly a fintech product, it’s yet another example of funding going into genAI tools that support lawyers.