Swedish legal artificial intelligence startup Legora has raised $550 million in a Series D funding round led by Accel, tripling its valuation from an October round to $5.55 billion as it seeks to expand in the US.
Existing investors Benchmark, Bessemer Venture Partners, General Catalyst, Iconiq, Redpoint Ventures and Y Combinator participated in the round, the company said in a statement Tuesday, confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report.
Legal AI startups have boomed as tools powered by large language models promise to upend the profession, saving lawyers time on grunt work like document review and drafting contracts. In February, Anthropic released a plug-in to help automate legal work that sent shares of traditional legal news, software and data services companies tumbling.
Legora has more than doubled its sales in every quarter since the final three months of 2024, Chief Executive Officer Max Junestrand said in an interview, declining to comment further on revenue.
It plans to use the funding to rapidly grow in the US, the home market of its competitor Harvey. Legora recently announced new offices in Houston and Chicago, in addition to its existing New York and Denver hubs, and expects to have 300 employees in the US by the end of 2026.
“We haven’t spent any of the money from our Series C yet,” Junestrand said. “But we’re expecting to significantly go up in our burn rate this year as we scale out the team in the US.”
Harvey, which had a financing round in December, is in talks to raise funds at an $11 billion valuation, Forbes reported last month.
Legora uses a mix of large language models, primarily Anthropic’s Claude, and is embedded in tools like Microsoft Word to help users analyze large volumes of documents, conduct research across databases and draft contracts. It counts major law firms including White & Case, Linklaters and Dentons as customers.
With the latest round, Accel investor Arun Mathew is joining the company board. Mathew, who also co-led Accel’s investment into Anthropic, said large language models won’t take over the entire software market and platforms such as Legora’s that are built on top of LLMs will remain relevant.
“Twenty years ago we thought Google was going to dominate everything, but there are clearly categories and verticals that are too nuanced to be outsourced to a horizontal provider,” Mathew said in an interview. “Legal is one of those areas.”
New investors, including Alkeon Capital, Bain Capital, FirstMark Capital, Menlo Ventures, and Salesforce Ventures, are joining Legora’s round.
Written by: Yazhou Sun @Bloomberg
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