Contract Data

Today, contract analytics and management platform LinkSquares announced it raised $14.5 million in a Series A funding round led by Jump Capital and including investment from First Ascent Ventures and previous investors MassMutual Ventures and Hyperplane Venture Capital. The new capital infusion comes just under a year after the Boston-based company also raised $4.8 million. 

LinkSquares provides analytics around the contractual obligations between companies' legal departments and their suppliers and third parties.

LinkSquares CEO and co-founder Vishal Sunak said the company will use this new investment to explore other technologies across the lifecycle of contracts and enhance its current technology.

Indeed, along with funding, LinkSquares also announced it expanded its "Smart Values" dataset, which extracts contract data, including termination dates, auto renewal and other essential contract terms. Now, the Smart Value data sets include 30 terms, with the addition of payment terms, limitation of liability and more.

Sunak said the company plans on further expanding Smart Value's datasets to meet clients' universal contract needs, as well as looking into expanding to the pre-signature stage of contracts, but he didn't provide further specifics.

Sunak noted that Linksquares aims to help legal departments more automatically analyze their contractual requirements to better understand their company's liability. The goal is to save corporate counsel time and allow them to focus more on providing companywide strategy building and risk mitigation.

"'Where they are choosing to store their contracts hasn't been able to give them the insights they need. That's the problem they are having, and now LinkSquares can become that repository," he said.

The pressures to streamline contract management appears to be growing, as various contract management platforms have secured sizable investments over the last 12 months.

Evisort started 2019 with a $4.5 million investment in February and an additional $15 million later that year in December. Seal Software also received $15 million in March from e-signature company DocuSign, with whom it has a partnership. And professional and information services company Wolters Kluwer expanded its foothold in the contract market through its purchase contract lifecycle management software provider CLM Matrix for $35 million in May 2019, less than a year after acquiring contract management platform Legisway.