29 November 2017, London and Chicago – Luminance, the leading artificial intelligence platform for the legal profession, has closed a $10m Series A funding round that values the company at $50 million. The investment was led by Talis Capital, and also included Invoke Capital and Slaughter and May. Luminance will use the funds to expand its operations to meet increasing global demand, including supporting its newly-established North American headquarters in Chicago.

Luminance, which has been deployed in over 50 leading organisations worldwide, is a self-learning AI platform for the legal profession which accelerates and enhances contract review processes such as M&A due diligence and property lease review. The technology has been used to assist with over 200 live transactions to date. In response to strong demand Luminance has seen almost fourfold employee growth within one year.

“We look forward to using this new investment round to ensure we deliver on the excitement building around Luminance, as well as continue to grow our relationship with existing top-tier customers across Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the U.S.” said Emily Foges, Luminance CEO. “Just one year after launch, Luminance has already proven its value with leading law firms globally. We’re excited to boost our operations across the Atlantic with the opening of our Chicago office, and to continue to bring legal innovation to new markets around the world.”

Sally Wokes, a partner at Slaughter and May, said: “Slaughter and May has worked closely with the Luminance team since the product’s inception. The knowledge we have gained through piloting, testing and using the software on live transactions gives us real confidence in what we consider to be a highly differentiated due diligence tool. Our decision to invest in this latest funding round reflects our belief in Luminance and our commitment to harnessing innovation for the benefit of our clients.”

Vasile Foca, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Talis Capital, added, “We have seen technology integration within the legal sector, in particular that based on artificial intelligence and machine learning, transition from a support function to an enabler and efficiency-driver, allowing lawyers to focus on real added value to clients. Since launching investment last year, we have seen Luminance truly lead the competition in this regard and we are excited to be a part of their growth and continue our support.”

Using a unique combination of supervised and unsupervised machine learning, Luminance reads and understands vast quantities of legal documents at speeds no human can match. Moving well beyond legacy contract review software, Luminance automatically sorts and classifies contracts to uncover even subtle risks at the outset of a project. Combined with in-built, sophisticated collaboration tools, lawyers can increase the efficiency of their review by over 100% without sacrificing accuracy.

U.S. Managing Director George T. Tziahanas will be responsible for meeting the needs of firms adopting Luminance’s contract-understanding technology in the region, while building out the Chicago-based team to over 10 by year end.

“My top priority is to hire an impressive team in Chicago to drive growth and serve our great clients,” said George Tziahanas. “Throughout my career, I have witnessed legal teams challenged with analysing large sets of complex information. Luminance is the only technology that can keep pace with modern legal needs, thanks to its unique ability to adapt to a firm’s specialties and expertise, with no training required. Chicago’s status as major financial, scientific, and legal hub made it the obvious choice for our first US office.”

Luminance, developed from Ph.D. research at the University of Cambridge, launched in September 2016 and has customers in 15 countries, including Slaughter and May (UK), Gilbert + Tobin (Australia), WongPartnership (Singapore) and Chapman Tripp (New Zealand). The company was recently recognised for Horizontal Innovation by the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) in London, and also won ‘Best AI Product in Legal’ at the inaugural CogX AI Innovation Awards.

About Talis Capital

Talis Capital is a London based venture capital firm, focused on B2B technology companies within three key areas: Security, Business Intelligence/SaaS and Financial Services. Talis Capital has completed over $380m of transactions since 2009 and has a strong track record of investments. Talis has made over 30 venture investments and count some of the fastest growing tech start-ups in its portfolio – Darktrace, Onfido, Iwoca, - among many others. For more information visit: https://www.taliscapital.com/