jhana.ai raises funds to build AI research tool for lawyers

The funding round, led by Together Fund, also saw participation from Razorpay co-founders Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar, Kunal Shah from CRED, and others.

The new capital raised will be used to develop proprietary datasets and AI models, and to hire legal and AI researchers.

Founded in 2022, Bengaluru-based jhana.ai offers an AI-powered legal analysis and drafting tool to Indian lawyers and law firms

Artificial intelligence (AI) legal technology startup jhana.ai has raised $1.6 million in its ongoing first round of funding, led by Freshworks co-founder Girish Mathrubootham’s venture capital firm Together Fund.

The round also included angel investor Shyamal Anadkat, former VMWare CEO Scott Davis, Razorpay co-founders Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar, Kunal Shah of CRED, and angel investors Cory Levy and Ojas Shukla.

In a statement, the startup said the “India portion of the round” is still being closed and will be announced soon.

The fresh capital will be used to develop proprietary datasets and AI models. Some of the funds will also be used to hire researchers in the areas of law and AI.

Bengaluru-based jhana.ai, founded in 2022 by Em McGlone, Hemanth Bharatha Chakravarthy, and Benjamin Hoffner-Brodsky, offers an AI-powered legal analysis and authoring tool for Indian lawyers and law firms.

Commenting on the fundraising, Together Fund Managing Partner Manav Garg said, “Jhana’s AI-powered paralegal solution has the potential to transform the way legal professionals operate, increasing efficiency and accessibility in the national market. We look forward to partnering with the team as they continue to redefine the future of legal support.”

The startup’s AI Paralegal product uses AI to read files and generate results such as subpoenas, advisories, and memos for attorneys and law firms. Meanwhile, another offering called Document Intelligence reviews documents to flag risks, suggest edits, identify deviations from standard practices, and more.

The platform claims to leverage its proprietary collection of 15 Mn+ case law and online sources to offer its clients consistent legal research solutions. The startup claims to have been nurtured by the likes of Jio GenNext, AWS Public Sector Startup Hub, Microsoft Founders Hub, and Google Cloud Startups Program.

This development comes as generative AI (GenAI) has become the hot topic of the season. Building on large language models from Google and OpenAI, new-age tech startups are using the emerging technology to create new use cases and serve customers across domains.

This has given rise to over 100 GenAI startups calling India home. As a result, the AI ​​space has seen renewed investor interest as these homegrown players have raised over $600 million between 2019 and the first half of 2024.

Earlier in the day, the AI ​​startup, founded by Mukesh Bansal, founder of Myntra and Cultfit Nurix AI raises $27.5 million in a seed funding round from Accel and General Catalyst. On the same day, the founder of BharatGPT CoRover also earned $4 million in a Series A funding round led by Venture Catalysts to scale its AI-powered conversational chatbots.