Kollanethu: System acts as very powerful painkiller
An agentic AI start-up which aims to transform the way in-house legal teams handle high-volume work has attracted a “significant” investment from London law firm Mishcon de Reya, which tested its products.
Anup Kollanethu, chief executive and co-founder of Ctrl AI, said the company had also received funding from individual “legal veteran” investors. He did not specify the size of any of the investments.
Mr Kollanethu, a former legal operations manager at EY, DWF and Freshfields, said he developed and launched Ctrl AI with co-founder and chief product officer Nicky Pearson, formerly a director of operations at Liberty Global and operations manager at Freshfields. Neither are lawyers.
Ctrl AI describes itself as “a suite of agentic Al tools that supercharge how enterprises interrogate large volumes of data and manage legal disputes”. Agentic AI is an advanced form of AI that can act autonomously.
Mr Kollanethu said the startup was working with “a number” of FTSE 50 companies. “We are dealing with a significant volume of regulated disputes across multiple sectors, for example telecoms, energy and financial services.”
The “whole idea” was to enable in-house teams to reduce process-driven work, with agentic AI enabling them to work in a “faster, more accurate and more consistent way”, he explained.
Ctrl AI could act as a “very powerful painkiller” when facing large volumes of work of limited complexity, reducing “manual work and improving engagement”.
Mr Kollanethu, who worked at Mishcon de Reya as a strategic advisor last year, said the law firm “was a supporter” as he and Mr Pearson developed their ideas.
The firm then played a provided a “huge amount” of support in enabling the startup to test its products.
The startup’s team of four, based in London, included a product engineer who had trained as a lawyer. Ctrl AI also relies on a team of product engineers based in India.
Mr Kollanethu said the priority was now to take the product to market and grow the revenue.
He was “not in a major rush” to launch a seed funding round, but “if an interested investor comes along”, he was “happy to have a conversation”.
A spokesman for Mishcon de Reya said the firm had “a long history of investing in legal tech startups through MDR Lab”.
The funding for Ctrl AI followed Mishcon de Reya’s investment in Kato, a commercial leasing platform which had gone on to secure venture capital funding.
“Unlike conventional tools aimed at enhancing a law firm’s own delivery model, Ctrl AI’s products are tailored specifically for in-house legal operations at large and medium enterprises.”
James Libson, managing partner of Mishcon, added: “Our investment in Ctrl AI reflects our belief in the transformative potential of advanced AI solutions for the legal market. We see enormous value in enabling legal teams to become more data-driven, efficient, and strategic.”
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