Toronto-based legaltech startup Alexi has closed $15 million CAD ($11 million USD) in Series A financing as it looks to expand its team this year.
The all-equity round, which closed earlier this month, was led by Drive Capital, with participation from existing investor Draper Associates. A spokesperson for Alexi told BetaKit that the company received smaller cheques as part of the round, but declined to disclose the investors. To date, Alexi has raised over $20 million CAD.
Alexi’s platform is designed to help legal professionals to produce high-quality memos, pinpoint crucial legal issues and arguments, and automate routine litigation tasks with AI. The startup claims its AI technology identifies the most authoritative primary law relevant to a user’s query and compiles the key legal principles into a well-structured research memo.
The startup traces its roots to CEO Mark Doble’s time studying law at Queen’s University, where he became interested in AI and natural-language processing. After working for less than a year at a law firm, Doble started Alexi in 2017, later partnering with now-co-founder and CTO Sam Bhasin, who was previously working at Bombardier. A year after founding the company, Alexi was one of 10 companies accepted into Techstars’ AI accelerator program in Montréal.
The software is targeted towards small, mid-size, and large law firms, as well as in-house counsel teams. Some of the law firms it counts as customers include Gowling WLG, McLeod Law, and Stewart McKelvey, according to its website.
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In a statement announcing the new funding, Alexi claimed its user activity is increasing by 15 to 20 percent each month. According to the startup, several hundred law firms with thousands of active litigators use the platform.
“We evaluate over 6,000 companies a year, most of which position themselves as an ‘AI company.’ Alexi is one of the very few examples, however, of using AI to solve a business problem,” Chris Olsen, partner at Drive Capital, who will join Alexi’s board of directors, said in a statement. “Lawyers who use Alexi run more successful law practices. It is only a matter of time until attorneys all over the world are using Alexi to be better lawyers.”
The new capital will be used to support hiring across engineering, product development, brand and design, legal, and business development teams. The startup’s headcount was 23 before some recent hires, according to Alexi’s spokesperson, and the company hopes to grow that number to close to 60 before the end of the year.
Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by Gabrielle Henderson.
