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Exclusive: Legal AI startup Leya is in talks to raise new funding just weeks after raising a seed round, sources say

The Leya website
The Leya website. Leya
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Stockholm-based legal AI startup Leya is already in talks to raise a substantial new funding round, weeks after it raised its seed round from US fund Benchmark.

Leya, which went through Y Combinator six months after its founding, works with law firms to help them use AI to improve their operations.

The startup previously received $10.5 million from Benchmark, accelerator Y Combinator, which also participated in the round, London-based VC Hummingbird, and San Francisco-based SV Angel.

The funding is being led by Redpoint Ventures, a backer of Mistral and Stripe, six sources familiar told Business Insider. While the size of the new round has not been confirmed, the startup is in talks to raise between $15 to $25 million, according to three sources.

It would be a significant upround to the previous deal, two sources told BI.

Sources spoke to BI on condition of anonymity, as details about the deal, which is not yet finalized and subject to change, are still private.

Leya and Redpoint did not respond to requests for comment.

Legal AI startups have been all the rage of late. US-based Harvey has raised three funding rounds in a year and is in talks to raise from investors at a $2 billion valuation, per The Information. In Europe, Robin AI raised a $26 million Series B earlier this year, while London's Lawhive, a company that uses AI to offer legal services, raised $12 million from GV, the VC investment arm of Alphabet.

The deal is not dissimilar to the funding process for German startup Tacto, which raised funding from Sequoia last year but was immediately funded by Index Ventures at a higher valuation, as exclusively reported by BI. That deal was announced as one larger €50 million ($54 million) funding round.

Leya charges its 70 law firm clients between €1,000 to €3,000 ($1074 to $3223) as an annual subscription fee per user, per Sifted. Following its seed round, Leya had around 70 employees and works with law firms and in-house legal teams across Europe.

Leya works by accessing the reams of legal files and documents available across EU databases and other sources, combining them with direct citations and references from the material.

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Riddhi
Riddhi Kanetkar
Riddhi was a senior startups and VC reporter at Business Insider's London office, where she covered VC, and AI and climate startups. She has reported on everything from funding rounds to layoffs and investigated company culture at tech startups. She also writes about the intersection of Big Tech and VC, and global industry trends in the AI and VC ecosystem.She received her Bachelor's from UCL, where she studied Comparative Literature. Have a tip? Contact her at rkanetkar@bjinnox.com, or reach out using a non-work device at riddhikanetkar@proton.me, or on Signal at riddhikanetkar.64Sample of stories:GoStudent, the $3 billion edtech darling, scaled fast and partied hard. The result was a mess.AI Forge promised to help founders build their dream startups. Some say the incubator was a chaotic disappointment.Fast-fashion behemoth Shein is preparing for an IPO. Here's an inside look at the challenges it could face.DeepMind's secret mafia: Meet the stealth startups emerging from Google's AI labThe wildest deal in tech right now is about to turn 6-month-old LLM startup Mistral into a $2 billion unicorn, sources sayPeter Thiel-backed TMRW wants to revolutionize the egg-freezing industry. We visited the startup's new London HQ to experience its tech first hand.I was laid off from events startup Pollen after it suddenly imploded. I'm furious when I think about missed paychecks and not making rent.Shock, anger, and confusion: Inside Snap's decision to shut down Zenly, a social app with 40 million users