Luminance, a UK-based legal tech startup, has raised $75 million in a Series C funding round led by Point72 Private Investments, bringing its total funding to $138 million. This significant investment marks one of the largest funding rounds for a pure-play legal AI company in the UK and European market.

The company's AI-powered platform is designed to provide highly accurate interrogation of complex legal issues and contracts, automating and augmenting a business's approach to contracts, including generation, negotiation, and post-execution analysis. Luminance's proprietary Large Language Model (LLM) is trained on over 150 million verified legal documents, many of which are non-public, making its platform relatively defensible in a post-DeepSeek world.

Luminance's "Panel of Judges" approach uses specialist AI to automate and augment contract analysis, setting it apart from other law tech startups that tend to build on existing general-purpose GenAI LLMs. According to CEO Eleanor Lightbody, this domain-specialized AI is built with lawyers in mind, providing validated and trusted outputs that can be used across the entire contract life cycle.

The company has seen significant growth, with over 700 clients spread across 70 countries, including major corporations such as AMD, Hitachi, LG Chem, SiriusXM, Rolls-Royce, and Lamborghini. Luminance has tripled its headcount in North America, with the opening of three offices in San Francisco, Dallas, and Toronto, while expanding its US HQ in New York.

The funding round also saw participation from Forestay Capital, RPS Ventures, and Schroders Capital, as well as existing investors including March Capital, National Grid Partners, and Slaughter and May. This investment is a testament to the growing interest in legal tech, which has seen an explosion of innovation in the last year, with startups like Eudia, Genie AI, Harvey, and Lawhive raising significant funds.

Luminance's founders, Adam Guthrie and Dr. Graham Sills, are Cambridge-based academics who developed the platform with seed funding from the late Dr. Mike Lynch, founder of Autonomy. Lynch's tragic passing last year has not slowed the company's momentum, with Lightbody taking over as CEO after the Series A round.

The legal industry is poised for significant disruption, and Luminance's "legal-grade" AI is well-positioned to lead the charge. As Sri Chandrasekar, Managing Partner of Point72 Private Investments, noted, "We know this market well and strongly believe in the power of next-generation AI to revolutionize contracting processes across the enterprise."

With this significant funding round, Luminance is set to continue its rapid growth and expansion, further solidifying its position as a leader in the legal tech space. As the legal industry increasingly adopts AI-powered solutions, Luminance's "legal-grade" AI is poised to play a critical role in shaping the future of contract analysis and negotiation.