SpotDraft Secures $54M to Enhance AI-Powered Contract Management Platform

SpotDraft raises $54M to help legal teams manage contracts with AI - SiliconANGLE

SpotDraft raises $54M to help legal teams manage contracts with AI SpotDraft, which makes an artificial intelligence-powered platform for contract lifecycle management, announced Wednesday it raised $54 million in Series B funding led by Vertex Growth and Trident Partners. The company provides a tool for corporate legal teams to manage all aspects of contracting using AI to do the laborious knowledge work. This includes managing all stages of a contract, from its initial creation and negotiation through execution, monitoring and compliance and eventual renewal and termination. SpotDraft's software includes AI-assisted redlining tools, which is the process of editing a contract where two or more parties negotiate or work together to produce a single document that all sides can agree on. It also has an intelligent contract repository that tracks the history of changes, third-party papers, agreements and e-signatures. "We believe 2025 will be an inflection point for team SpotDraft," said Shashank Bijapur, chief executive of SpotDraft. "Apart from market expansion and talent growth, we're strongly committed to deepening the use of AI in the product to help legal teams unlock efficiencies and drive innovation." Bijapur, an alumnus of Harvard Law School, and Madhav Bhagat, an alumnus of Carnegie Mellon, co-founded the company in 2017. Before launching the company, Bijapur practiced law in New York and Bhagat worked at Google LLC. SpotDraft launched VerifAI in 2023, a generative AI Microsoft Word plug-in that allows legal teams to check contracts against user-specified guidelines and ask open-ended questions. It is aimed at assisting with the contract review process to ensure compliance with specific standards. It can provide comments and explain its reasoning behind modifications, allowing other parties to follow along and review potential changes. "SpotDraft's CLM platform has made a huge impact on our legal team's time, workflows, and efficiencies," said Jonathan Franz, head of legal at Crunchbase Inc. Franz cited the platform's ease of use and its capability in assisting with automating high-volume contract work for helping close deals faster.

SpotDraft Bags $54 Mn To Help Biz Automate Legal Contracts

Founded in 2017, SpotDraft operates an AI-powered CLM platform that helps sales, legal and human resources teams manage multiple aspects of contracting AI-driven enterprise tech startup SpotDraft has raised $54 Mn in its Series B funding round led by Singapore-based Vertex Growth and Trident Partners. The round also saw participation from existing backers Xeed VC, Arkam Ventures, Prosus Ventures, and Premji Invest. The startup plans to utilise the fresh proceeds for market expansion and to hire for key leadership roles. A chunk of the capital will also be used for "deepening" the use of AI in its product suite and focus on product enhancements. Founded in 2017 by Shashank Bijapur, Madhav Bhagat and Rohith Salim, SpotDraft operates an AI-powered contract lifecycle management (CLM) platform that helps sales, legal and human resources teams manage multiple aspects of contracting, including AI-assisted redlining, e-signatures, third-party papers, clickwrap agreements, among others. "We believe 2025 will be an inflection point for team SpotDraft... Apart from market expansion and talent growth, we're strongly committed to deepening the use of AI in the product to help legal teams unlock efficiencies and drive innovation," said cofounder and CEO Bijapur. Commenting on the fundraise, Vertex Growth's managing partner James Lee said, "SpotDraft's product vision and go-to-market strategy is anchored on a deep understanding of enterprise legal teams' pain points and the unwavering commitment to delivering a world-class solution in enabling faster and more accurate contract processes. We're excited to join and support SpotDraft as they continue to leverage AI to transform the legal tech landscape." This follows SpotDraft raising $26 Mn in its Series A funding round led by Premji Invest in March 2023. It also bagged $1.5 Mn in a round led by Binny Bansal-backed 021 Capital in 2019. With offices in Bengaluru and New York, SpotDraft claims to have more than 250 employees under its belt. The startup claims to cater to clients such as Spendlfo, MoEngage, Garner, Crunchbase, among others. This comes at a time when AI has spawned the rise of multiple legal tech startups that help customers automate tasks like contract drafting, legal briefs, opinions, and filings. As a result, investors are making a beeline for the emerging sector. In November 2024, Info Edge announced plans to invest INR 4 Cr in its portfolio legal tech company LegitQuest. Prior to that, AI-powered legal tech startup jhana.ai secured $1.6 Mn in its maiden funding round led by Together Fund.

SpotDraft raises $54 million from Vertex Growth, Trident Partners, others

Existing investors, such as Flipkart cofounder Binny Bansal's Xeed VC, Arkam Ventures, Prosus Ventures, and Premji Invest, also participated in this round. SpotDraft provides an AI-driven contract automation platform aimed at helping in-house legal teams manage different aspects of the contracting process.Software-as-a-service (SaaS) firm SpotDraft, specialising in contract management and legal agreements, has raised $54 million in Series B funding led by Vertex Growth and Trident Partners. Existing investors, including Flipkart cofounder Binny Bansal's Xeed VC, Arkam Ventures, Prosus Ventures, and Premji Invest have also participated in this round. ET was the first to report this development on Wednesday. Founded in 2017 by Shashank Bijapur, Madhav Bhagat, and Rohith Salim, SpotDraft offers an AI-powered contract automation platform designed to assist in-house legal teams in managing various aspects of the contracting process. This includes AI-assisted redlining, e-signatures, intelligent contract repositories, third-party agreements, and clickwrap agreements. "Apart from market expansion and talent growth, we're strongly committed to deepening the use of AI in the product to help legal teams unlock efficiencies and drive innovation," said Bijapur, CEO of SpotDraft. Prior to this round, the firm raised $26 million in March 2023, following which it was valued at around $150 million. SpotDraft said that it is sharpening the focus on product enhancements and expanding its AI capabilities. Products such as VerifAI and ClickThrough, are designed to cater primarily to mid-market companies. The company now employs over 250 people across its offices in Bengaluru and New York, serving over 400 organisations and cross-functional teams. In alignment with its growth strategy, SpotDraft also plans to expand its leadership team. According to data intelligence platform Tracxn, SpotDraft more than doubled its revenue to Rs 47.1 crore in FY24, while its losses remained steady at Rs 67.4 crore. This funding round comes at a time when the contract management software market is experiencing notable growth, fuelled by the rising demand for businesses to streamline their contract workflows and improve compliance and efficiency. "SpotDraft's product vision and go-to-market strategy is anchored on a deep understanding of enterprise legal teams' pain points and the unwavering commitment to delivering a world-class solution in enabling faster and more accurate contract processes," said James Lee, managing partner, Vertex Growth.

SpotDraft taps AI to help streamline contract management | TechCrunch

More and more legal professionals are embracing AI, surveys show. Per a recent poll from legaltech company Clio, 79% of firms used some form of AI for casework last year, up from just 19% in 2023. Despite some skepticism of the tech, in-house counsel has shown an interest, as well, with one survey suggesting that nearly half of attorneys think AI can yield cost savings for their departments. Legaltech providers are popping up left and right to meet the demand. SpotDraft, which focuses on building contract automation and management software, is one such relative newcomer. Founded in 2017, SpotDraft sells tools to help in-house legal teams simplify their contracting tasks. Shashank Bijapur, Madhav Bhagat, and Rohith Salim were on SpotDraft's launch team. Bijapur, the company's CEO, says that the idea for SpotDraft came to him while he was an associate at Bengaluru-based law firm White & Case, which dealt with high volumes of corporate contracts. SpotDraft's platform uses AI to extract key details and clauses from contracts, providing summaries of changes and suggested follow-up work. A unified task center shows upcoming deadlines, renewal reminders, and individual and team jobs, helping orgs stay organized -- at least in theory. One of SpotDraft's AI-powered features, VerifAI, taps AI to review contracts against a selected guide or template. Another, ClickThrough, keeps all contract agreements in a dedicated, centralized repository, and lets users search across and make reports with them. SpotDraft competes for clients against vendors like LinkSquares, DocuSign-owned Lexion, Workday's Evisort, and Filevine. But it's holding its own, according to Bijapur. SpotDraft currently has around 400 customers, and the company's year-over-year revenue grew 169% last year. "We believe 2025 will be an inflection point for team SpotDraft," Bijapur said. "We're strongly committed to deepening the use of AI in the product to help legal teams unlock efficiencies and drive innovation." Investors seem pleased with SpotDraft's growth trajectory. This week, the company announced that it raised $54 million in a Series B round led by Vertex Ventures Singapore with participation from Trident Partners. It probably didn't hurt that the broader legaltech sector is seeing an infusion of funds after a rough few fiscal quarters. In 2024, VC funding in legaltch reached $2.6 billion, per investment database Pitchbook, up from a decline of less than $1 billion invested in 2023. Bringing the company's total raised to just over $80 million, the new cash will be put toward R&D, market expansion, and growing SpotDraft's 250-person workforce across New York -- SpotDraft's HQ -- and Bengaluru. Bijapur says that SpotDraft is developing an "agentic solution" to help in-house counsel achieve "strategic business outcomes." He wouldn't reveal exactly what form this solution will take, but unsurprisingly, AI is involved. "Traditional legal work is bound by the 'dollars by the hour' model, where inefficiency is often baked into the system," Bijapur said. "The agentic solution will interact with other tools that the in-house team uses. This will reduce the amount of time spent on learning and configuring tools, allowing the team to focus on strategic work."