E-discovery technology and services provider DISCO has closed on an $83 million funding round led by Toronto-based venture capital firm Georgian Partners. Other investors included Bessemer Venture Partners, LiveOak Venture Partners, The Stephens Group, and Comerica, all of whom participated in earlier funding rounds with the company.

The company aims to use the funds to expand beyond its core e-discovery business and the U.S. market.

DISCO, which promotes itself as “by lawyers, for lawyers,” has leveraged artificial intelligence to create cloud-based, e-discovery automation technology. It counts among its clients both large and small law firms, corporate legal departments and government agencies.

Kiwi Camara, CEO at DISCO and former partner at Houston-based Camara & Sibley, said this latest investment, which brings DISCO's total funding since its inception to $135 million, will be leveraged by the company in three specific ways.

First, it will be put toward supporting and growing DISCO's market share in the cloud e-discovery market in the U.S. Second, the company will use the funds to expand its legal tech offerings beyond just e-discovery.

“We'll start doing that first with a [legal workflow] product called Case Builder, which addresses handling disputes, investigations, and litigation from the day the client walks through the door all the way through the final resolution,” Camara said. “And second, by taking to market our DISCO AI review offering, which is automated finding of evidence powered by DISCO AI technology.”

Lastly, DISCO will also use the funds to expand its presence internationally. In November 2018, the company opened an office in London to both support existing clients who have multinational litigation and arbitration and to attract new U.K. customers. For Camara, however, the U.K. is just the tip of the iceberg.

“We are going to get that office humming and off the ground, and once that happens you'll see us quickly open a series of offices in the other major international e-discovery [markets] like Frankfurt, the rest of continental Europe, Asia and so on,” he said.

With all this planned expansion both in the U.S. and beyond, DISCO will be looking to triple its workforce. “Over the next two years there is a plan to go from just over 200 people to … 600 people, and the bulk of that expansion will be in the U.S.,” Camara said, adding that DISCO will add 120 engineers in 2019 alone.

DISCO has also been adding to its ranks over the past year. Last July, the company brought on Kristin Zmrhal-Murray, the former senior legal operations manager at Google, as its new vice president of customer success, a role that includes engaging with DISCO's legal clients.

Tyson Baber, a partner at Georgian Partners who recently joined DISCO's board of directions, said Georgian Partners invested in DISCO in large part because it believes it is a “leader in terms of their capabilities around AI” and support its long-term expansion plans.

“The opportunity in e-discovery is tremendous, but what we are more excited by is the expansion of the platform to address other areas, like legal work flow handling end-to-end case management and getting into some advanced types of AI with legal review. So I think there is a tremendous opportunity across legal tech,” Baber said.

DISCO is one of several e-discovery companies to receive substantial investments over the past year. In January 2018, Logikcull closed a $25 million Series B funding round led by New Enterprise Associates, while last May, Exterro announced an undisclosed “nine-figure” strategic investment deal with New York City-based private equity firm Leeds Equity Partners. One month later, Everlaw closed on $25 million Series B funding round led by Menlo Ventures.