According to EU-Startups, Ankar, a London-based AI platform for patent capture and protection founded by Palantir veterans, has raised a €17 million Series A round to grow its team and expand into the US. The round was led by Atomico, with participation from Index Ventures, Norrsken VC, and Daphni, bringing total funding to €20 million. Co-founder Tamar Gomez stated that AI will turn IP from a cost center into a growth driver. This funding is part of a wider 2025 trend, with other European LegalTech startups like Madrid’s iPNOTE, Amsterdam’s Saga, Copenhagen’s Pandektes, and London’s Augmetec collectively raising about €7.7 million in disclosed rounds. Taken together with Ankar’s haul, that’s roughly €24.7 million flowing into AI-enabled legal and IP software this year, with Ankar’s round being one of the largest.
Ankar Bets Big on AI for Stodgy IP
Here’s the thing: the intellectual property world is famously archaic. It’s a world of dense legalese, manual prior-art searches, and labyrinthine filing processes. Ankar’s bet, coming from a team that cut its teeth at the data-obsessed Palantir, is that AI can finally bring this system into the 21st century. The vision of turning IP from a defensive legal cost into a proactive growth engine is compelling. If they can truly map a company’s innovation pipeline, predict patentable ideas, and automate the grueling parts of the process, that’s a massive value proposition. But it’s also a massive “if.” This isn’t just about building a clever algorithm; it’s about integrating into some of the most risk-averse and process-heavy departments in big corporations and law firms. Getting them to trust a black box with their most valuable secrets? That’s the real hurdle.
The Broader LegalTech Gold Rush
Ankar’s funding isn’t happening in a vacuum. The report shows a clear spike in investor interest across Europe for AI applied to legal workflows. From automating legal research in Copenhagen to managing IP costs in Madrid, there’s a gold rush happening. This makes sense. The legal industry is a prime target for automation—it’s data-rich, process-heavy, and historically slow to adopt new tech. But I’m skeptical of the “steady funding activity” narrative. €24.7 million across five companies, with one taking the lion’s share, feels more like a few bold bets than a mature market surge. Most are still at Seed stage. This looks like the early innings where VCs are placing scattered bets, hoping one or two platforms will define the category. The real test will be which of these can move beyond a neat demo and achieve deep, sticky enterprise adoption.
The US Expansion Gamble
So, Ankar is taking its fresh capital and heading to the United States. On one hand, this is the obvious move—the US is the world’s largest and most litigious IP market. If you can make it there, the addressable market is enormous. But it’s also a brutally competitive arena. They’ll be going up against established legal research giants like Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis, who are pouring billions into their own AI efforts, plus a host of well-funded US-based LegalTech startups. Their Palantir pedigree might give them a data-credibility edge with certain clients, but it also comes with… let’s call it a specific reputation. They’re not just selling software; they’re selling a transformation. And convincing American law firms and corporate legal departments to transform with a foreign startup is a tall order. The funding gives them a war chest, but the battle is just beginning.
