Legal tech has come a long way, but the bulk of an intellectual property or patent lawyer’s work today is still done with spreadsheets, word processors, and PDFs. A startup out of Delaware, Solve Intelligence, is using generative AI to speed up that work, believing its tech is uniquely suited to the needs of patent attorneys who need both domain expertise and legal knowledge to do their work.
Solve offers an in-browser document editor that works like Google Docs but is powered by an AI model to help attorneys with the drafting and writing required for IP work and filing patents. The company says its AI can help with patent drafting, office action response, claim charting, and invention disclosure generation and enhancement.
Now, the startup has raised $12 million in a Series A funding round, led by 20VC, to further build its momentum on the back of growing traction, a widening customer base and increasing revenue.
Solve’s co-founder and CEO, Chris Parsonson, told TechCrunch the startup’s product is now used by 200 IP teams across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, including manufacturers like Siemens and Avery Dennison, as well as law firms DLA Piper and Finnegan — all without any sales or marketing staff.
“We now have millions of dollars in ARR, our revenue has been growing ~25% month-on-month since our launch, and we’ve hired a team of world-class patent attorneys, AI researchers, and software engineers,” Parsonson said. He did not disclose a number for the company’s recurring revenue.
The two-year-old company is now profitable, Parsonson said, adding that before the Series A, it had more money in its bank account than the $3 million seed it raised when it started in 2023.
Some of that traction seems to have come not only due to more enterprises allowing their lawyers to use AI, but thanks to advances in AI development that have helped the startup flesh out its product.
“Eighteen months ago, it wasn’t possible to build software for patent workflows. Now it is,” said co-founder and chief research officer Sanj Ahilan. “We have built evaluations and algorithms to bridge the gap between the output from off-the-shelf AI models such as ChatGPT and professional-grade legal content.”
The startup will use the Series A proceeds to scale its product, hire staff, and open a new office in New York this year. The company has 15 employees and it plans to hire around 20 people over the next year. Microsoft’s Venture Fund (M12), Thomson Reuters Ventures and Y Combinator also participated in the round. This round brings Solve’s total capital raised to $15 million.
Some of that money is also going toward R&D for life science applications. Parsonson said Solve is working with some large pharmaceutical companies and law firms to expand its patent drafting and patent prosecution functionality to help with sequence listing and patents.
“We’ll double down on R&D investment to build more functionality for life science customers,” Parsonson told TechCrunch. “In addition, we’ll be investing heavily in expanding our product beyond drafting and prosecution to freedom-to-operate analysis, claim chart licensing and litigation, as well as patent portfolio analysis and management tools for in-house IP teams.”
Solve is contending with several competitors in the legal tech space, including PatSnap, IPRally, HarveyAI, and Casetext (acquired by Thomson Reuters for $650 million in 2023).
But Parsonson thinks his startup stands out in terms of its AI output quality, customization ability, and UX.
“Every patent attorney has a different style in which they like to draft patent applications, respond to office actions, and more,” Parsonson said. “The most popular feature of our product is the ability to customize the AI to a user’s own unique style, and then switch between different styles for different jurisdictions, technology fields, and clients. Users and IP teams can build out their own proprietary library of customized AI styles.”
He also claimed that Solve’s strategic partnerships with its investors like Microsoft and Thomson Reuters will help it expand its offerings and serve AI systems tailored for patents on a large scale. “Legal workflows are deeply embedded in Microsoft products, such as Microsoft Word. Our strategic partnership with Microsoft will enable us to deepen our integrations with Word.”
