Ivo, which started out in New Zealand before moving to San Francisco, has announced a $16m Series A funding round that will scale its AI-powered contract review solution aimed at corporate legal teams.
They have around 150 clients so far, including Canva, Fonterra, Pipedrive and Eventbrite. And probably they’ll have a few more after they’ve spent that $16m on expanding the business.
Now, you may say: ‘Hold on…..aren’t there already a lot of AI contract review companies?’ For sure, but with the inhouse market so open to legal tech still, there is everything to play for.
A LegalOn survey found that about 18% of inhouse legal teams are now regularly using AI tools for contract review….which is a big step up from just a few years ago. It also means that the other 82% are not – and that constitutes 10,000s of large and small companies. In short, there is a huge untapped market there and Ivo may as well go for it – especially now it’s got this cash boost.
The Series A funding round was led by Costanoa Ventures, with participation from Fika Ventures, Uncork Capital, NFDG, Blackbird VC, GD1, and Phase One Ventures. It brings Ivo’s total funding to $22.2m following early backing from Daniel Gross, and a $4.8m seed round led by Fika Ventures and Uncork Capital in 2024, they explained.
They also wanted to point out that Ivo is a bit different to others in the same market segment because ‘Ivo’s sophisticated AI produces naturalistic redlines that mirror the work of experienced attorneys, maintaining consistent terminology and making minimal necessary changes’.
Does that make them radically different to competitors? Hmm, there’s so many direct competitors out there, and many more that have added doc review as part of the wider genAI convergence trend. It’s therefore hard to see real blue ocean water between many of them.
The reality is that buyers will have to test them out – and there are plenty of walk throughs on AL TV to watch to get an idea of what they’re like first. (See here: AL TV videos. )
Min-Kyu Jung, CEO and Co-founder of Ivo, said: ‘When I was a corporate lawyer, contract review was amongst the most manual and time-consuming tasks.’ Determined to solve this problem himself, Jung left his legal career, taught himself to code, and began building what would become Ivo. After speaking with hundreds of legal professionals and iterating through multiple versions of the product, his team developed a solution that lawyers could use in confidence.
He added: ‘The legal profession is in the early stages of an AI-driven transformation. We’re building Ivo to ensure this change enhances rather than diminishes the crucial role of legal judgment. Our vision is to give every legal team the power to handle enterprise-scale contract volumes while maintaining the highest standards of accuracy and control.’
And to wrap it up, here’s a satisfied Adrie Christiansen, Legal Operations Lead at Quora, who said that using Ivo they’ve been able to gain ‘average time savings of 45 minutes per contract review’ and that is ‘a 75% efficiency gain’.
Now, given that inhouse lawyers are not paid on the basis of how long they take to complete a legal task, isn’t this approach of using AI for contract review – especially now, and no matter which tool you choose – a slam dunk?
P.S. One thing that is different about Ivo is that they have a review page on their website, which is a nice move toward showing market feedback. They seem to be all positive reviews, but at least they’re making an effort to put that out there.
Congrats to them on the fund raise.