Sandstone raises $30M to bring AI to in-house legal teams

With Harvey and Legora burning done eight-figure backing rounds, ineligible tools person proven to beryllium 1 of the fastest-growing and astir hotly contested verticals among AI startups. But portion those tools absorption connected backstage practice, immoderate startups judge there’s inactive plentifulness of the ineligible marketplace that isn’t being served.

Sandstone, which announced $30 cardinal successful Series A backing connected Tuesday, is focused connected an overlooked portion of the ineligible space, focusing connected the tangle of overlapping tasks and systems facing in-house ineligible teams.

The Series A was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with information from existing investors astatine Sequoia, Mantis VC, SV Angel, Operator Partners, Kearny Jackson, Daybreak Ventures, Litquidity Ventures, and others. The Series A comes conscionable six months aft a $10 cardinal effect circular successful January, which was led by Sequoia.

As the founders picture it, Sandstone’s archetypal idiosyncratic basal volition beryllium the ineligible departments astatine tiny and mid-sized businesses.

“They unfastened up their laptop successful the morning, they spot each the enactment that’s travel successful done antithetic intake channels, whether that’s Slack messages, emails, Jira,” co-founder and main operating serviceman Jarryd Strydom told TechCrunch. “AI helps them way and triage that enactment appropriately, and past they tin physique customized workflows connected apical of our level to really execute work, whether that’s drafting, reviewing, oregon providing ineligible analysis.”

The effect has small successful communal with ineligible reasoning systems similar Harvey and Legora. Instead, Sandstone focuses connected narration absorption and workflow automation, some tuned to the unsocial demands of in-house ineligible work. As Strydom sees it, the absorption connected in-house ineligible departments allows Sandstone to supply worth wherever much generalized AI deployments often flounder.

“One of the convictions of Lightspeed was that they truly judge successful highly specialized vertical AI,” Strydom says, “because it takes a granular knowing of workflows to truly nail down however AI tin help.”

Sandstone volition besides look heated contention from frontier AI labs, which are progressively turning their attraction to the ineligible space. Anthropic has been steadily expanding its Claude for Legal offering, adding caller tools successful May for lawsuit instrumentality searches and deposition prep.