ThoughtRiver secures $10M funding to support global expansion as lawyers look to automate contracting and accelerate deal velocity

· Octopus Ventures leads Series A funding for Cambridge-founded legal tech company

· Company growth accelerates during pandemic as leading corporates choose ThoughtRiver to help drive deal velocity

London, UK. September 8th 2020: ThoughtRiver, the market leader in automated contract review and pre-screening, has today announced $10M (£7.5M) in Series A funding. The round is led by Octopus Ventures, a leading European venture capital firm which invests in technology innovation leaders.

The investment comes after ThoughtRiver achieved record growth over the past twelve months. It recently signed contracts with some of the world’s leading companies, including giants such as G4S, Singtel, and DB Schenker. ThoughtRiver also signed a strategic partnership with PwC, enabling the professional services firm to develop a proposition for its clients and the broader market, powered by ThoughtRiver software.

ThoughtRiver’s automated contract review software has become essential for firms looking to accelerate the process of reviewing, negotiating, and signing contracts to drive deal velocity. These firms can also now make critical business decisions informed by data from their black book of contracts, as surfaced by ThoughtRiver.

ThoughtRiver already has offices in New York, Singapore, London, Cambridge and Auckland, and will now focus even harder on growing US market share, scaling its sales and marketing efforts, and rolling out further integrations with major technology partners. As part of the company’s continued international development, ThoughtRiver recently announced the appointment of Michael Lisowski, formerly COO and divisional President at Ascential plc, as Chief Operating Officer.

Akriti Dokania, Early Stage Investor at Octopus Ventures, commented: “While the legal sector has been slow to adopt AI compared to other industries, ThoughtRiver has a proven business model based on solving a fundamental issue for lawyers. By using an advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) engine to drive faster contract reviews and acceleration of deal flow and business growth, legal professionals can work more efficiently than ever. We are thrilled to support the ThoughtRiver team with its plans for global expansion as the firm disrupts an established market and set of processes.”

ThoughtRiver CEO Tim Pullan, named by the Financial Times as one of the world’s top 10 legal technologists in 2019, commented: “To receive this investment in the current climate is testament to the relevance of ThoughtRiver’s technology, when across the globe, businesses are looking to do more with less. More efficient commerce is driven by faster contract review, and the pressure to optimise legal operations has never been greater. We look forward to using this investment to get our technology out to lawyers across all organisations, helping them accelerate business deals and at a broader level, facilitate economic growth.”

Octopus Ventures led the Series A round supported by existing ThoughtRiver seed investors Crane, Local Globe, Entrée Capital, Syndicate Room, and angel investor Duncan Painter.

A recent Gartner study (Legal and Compliance Automation Study – 2019) found that the number one ask of the legal department by other members of executive management is to increase speed, and ThoughtRiver delivers just that.