San Francisco, California – On February 5, Ivo, an innovative company dedicated to transforming contract management through artificial intelligence, announced its successful raising of $16 million in a Series A funding round. This investment will enhance its mission to deliver a reliable AI contract review solution at scale, meeting the increasing demand for intelligent automation in corporate legal departments.
As contract negotiation remains a significant bottleneck in the contract lifecycle, legal teams often spend countless hours on manual redlining and revisions, striving for accuracy amid increasing pressures to manage rising contract volumes. Traditional automation solutions have largely prioritized speed over precision, leaving lawyers to choose between efficiency and reliability. With their newly announced funding, Ivo aims to enhance its AI-driven platform, which has already assisted over 150 corporate legal teams, including notable clients such as Canva, Fonterra, Pipedrive, Weightwatchers, Eventbrite, and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City.
Costanoa Ventures leads the Series A round, with participation from Fika Ventures, Uncork Capital, NFDG, Blackbird VC, GD1, and Phase One Ventures. This funding brings Ivo's total capital raised to $22.2 million, following early support from investor Daniel Gross and a $4.8 million seed round led by Fika Ventures and Uncork Capital.
Ivo's platform introduces a groundbreaking approach to contract review that significantly enhances accuracy. It automatically checks contracts against company guidelines, offers precise recommendations for resolving discrepancies, and formulates compromise language for conflicting clauses. Unlike competitors that reduce legal review to a basic automation challenge, Ivo harnesses sophisticated AI to generate naturalistic redlines that reflect the work of seasoned attorneys, preserving consistent terminology with minimal changes.
"During my tenure as a corporate lawyer, contract review was one of the most time-consuming tasks," shared Min-Kyu Jung, CEO and Co-founder of Ivo. After deciding to tackle this challenge, Jung transitioned from law to tech, taught coding skills, and collaborated with legal professionals to develop a reliable solution.
The benefits to legal teams are substantial. Adrie Christiansen, Legal Operations Lead at Quora, noted, “Ivo reduced our average time to approve counterparty NDAs from four days to just two, while our first-pass turnaround improved from 11 hours to just five minutes.” Geotab's legal team echoed this success, reporting time savings of 45 minutes per contract review—a 75% efficiency boost that allows attorneys to focus on strategic priorities. Importantly, Ivo maintains high accuracy standards, offering transparency that enables lawyers to validate every suggestion. This is especially beneficial in high-volume contract reviews where consistency across numerous agreements is essential. With customizable options and comprehensive playbook features, legal teams can set clear guidelines, empowering business users to tackle initial contract reviews while ensuring proper processes for escalation.
The timing of Ivo's expansion is pivotal. As artificial intelligence emerges as a transformative force in the legal sector, many legal teams are striving to adopt scalable solutions. However, existing AI tools often fall short in managing complex legal analyses, which can complicate workflows as lawyers must scrutinize every output. With continuous input from in-house legal experts, Ivo is refining its platform to act as a powerful complement to legal judgment, enhancing the capabilities of teams grappling with extensive contract volumes.
The recent launch of Ivo Search Agent marks a significant advancement in the company's objective to modernize legal operations. This new feature revolutionizes contract searching and analysis by eliminating the need for manual metadata tagging—one of the critical pain points in traditional Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) systems. Now, legal teams can effortlessly search and generate reports across their entire portfolio of contracts, regardless of where documents are stored, whether in cloud solutions like Box and SharePoint or local systems. The tool integrates seamlessly with various data sources, streamlining implementation and delivering comprehensive insights.
"Ivo is fundamentally transforming contract review for lawyers,” stated Amy Cheetham, Partner at Costanoa Ventures. "By leveraging AI to manage the meticulous tasks associated with contract review, Ivo provides legal teams with tools crafted by lawyers to enhance speed and accuracy. The new search feature will significantly alleviate workload and bolster productivity in a landscape where legal departments are perpetually pressured to improve efficiency."
"The legal profession is at the onset of an AI-driven transformation," Min-Kyu Jung added. "We are committed to ensuring this evolution strengthens, rather than undermines, the vital role of legal judgment. Our vision is to empower every legal team to handle enterprise-level contract volumes while preserving the highest standards of accuracy and control."
This article is an edited version of a press release we received from a news agency to make the information clearer. However, the Korea IT Times is not responsible for all of the content in this article.
