NLPatent Raises $3m + AL Interview – Artificial Lawyer

NLPatent, an AI-driven patent research engine and intelligence platform, has raised $3m in a round co-led by Silicon Valley funds Draper Associates and Mighty Capital. (See AL in-depth interview with co-founder Stephanie Curcio below about the changing IP landscape and the investment.)

They said that the funding will accelerate product development, fuel go-to-market expansion across North America and Europe.

The NLPatent platform includes modules for Searching, Monitoring, and Visualizing patent data, enabling users to surface critical patents faster, track emerging technologies, and uncover innovation trends. It launched around four years ago and has been growing steadily since then.

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Legal Innovators New York Conference is next week! 

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AL Interview with CEO and co-founder Stephanie Curcio.

What does this funding mean on a personal level? 

When we started NLPatent, we had a firm belief that patent search could (and should!) be improved using AI. It seemed obvious. But choosing an LLM foundation to do it in 2021 was not obvious at all. It was an informed bet at a time when few in IP (or legal tech more broadly) were thinking that way. We built steadily with little outside capital, focusing on not only building a best-in-class solution but also earning the trust of our clients and the IP community.

Brick by brick, we’ve evolved that early idea into a complete patent research and intelligence platform. To have world-class investors back us now is validation that we’ve nailed it. We’re not selling “flashy demos” with a weak foundation. We went through the hard years of building proprietary technology purpose-built to actually do what it promises, and earned the trust from the IP ecosystem in the process. This funding round is proof that Silicon Valley has noticed what we’ve built and the sky’s the limit for us from here. 

What will the money be used for?

The capital will be used to scale what’s already working and accelerate what’s next. 

Specifically, we’ll:

• Expand our product roadmap, continue to build best-in-class tools needed to research and analyze patent and non-patent documents, underpinning patent workflows and R&D decisions. 
• Evolve our intelligence-related capabilities to perform fully agentic workflows that execute complex patent tasks end-to-end.
• Strengthen GTM team and footprint in North America and Europe.
• Invest in customer success and integrations, making it easier than ever for IP and R&D teams to adopt AI without disrupting their existing workflows.
• How much has AI changed the field of patent and IP work? 

When we got started, AI for IP was niche. There was a small group of forward-thinking vendors who saw the potential early and leaped at the opportunity. I, for one, was completely convinced that AI would transform the practice of patent law. But it wasn’t until the last 18 months or so that the space truly activated, with IP professionals as eager to buy AI-based solutions as vendors are to sell them. With new companies emerging almost weekly, it’s a noisy and crowded market, and even eager buyers are overwhelmed.

Generative AI has taken off in workflows like patent drafting, but any workflow is only as good as the underlying analysis. In patent practice, if you surface the wrong documents at the outset, every downstream work product (claims, arguments, filings, etc. etc.) can be improperly scoped, skewed, or just plain wrong. We believe that surfacing the right documents is what ensures that every layer built on top is reliable – that’s been NLPatent’s focus since day one. Getting the fundamentals right will be what determines which companies actually transform the industry.

Where in this changing market does NLPatent see itself now and in the mid-term?

Today, NLPatent is the most trusted AI-native patent research and intelligence platform in the market. We enable IP and R&D professionals to search, monitor, and extract insights from patents with greater speed and accuracy than anything else we (or our clients) have seen. We automate what ought to be automated and respect what shouldn’t. That intentional design choice is why our adoption has been so strong: we don’t shove “AI” down anyone’s throat or reinvent workflows that already work well.

But our mid-term vision is much bigger. We see NLPatent becoming an agentic platform that executes workflows rather than just supporting them. Because patent research sits horizontally across the entire IP lifecycle – from prosecution to litigation, licensing to risk assessment – owning this layer allows us to power that transformation. Our vision is for NLPatent to become the infrastructure behind how patent work gets done in the AI era. 

How much are patent lawyers adopting AI tools and where do you think this will get to in terms of transformation?

It’s an exciting moment for AI in IP. IP professionals are no longer sitting on the sidelines wondering if AI will take off – the train has already left the station! We’re seeing active evaluation, experimentation, and deployment of AI solutions across workflows, both in law firms and in-house at corporations. Over the past 18 months, this shift has accelerated. IP teams increasingly recognize that AI isn’t a passing fad but a fundamental change in how patent work gets done.

NLPatent sits at the foundation of this transformation. As the ecosystem matures, AI won’t just be a shiny new tool in attorneys’ toolkits – it will become the quiet, powerful engine behind the entire patent lifecycle. That’s what will free lawyers to focus their time where it matters most: high-value strategy, advocacy, and decision-making.

Thanks and congrats on the funding!

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Legal Innovators New York Conference is next week! 

The Legal Innovators New York conference is next week, November 19 and 20, with the event taking place in Midtown inside Latham & Watkins’ office.

The event is over two days, Day One: law firms, and Day Two: inhouse – and you are very welcome to take part in both to hear the latest insights about our increasingly AI-driven legal world and network with some of the most innovative law firms, ALSPs, tech companies, and corporates in America and beyond.

To take the speedy boarding route to Legal Innovators New York, on Nov 19 and 20, then please sign up here – which is free to attend for those at law firms and inhouse.

See you there!