On Thursday, regulatory intelligence startup Abstract announced that it had received $4.8 in seed funding in a round co-led by Bonfire Ventures and Communitas Capital.
The New York-based startup was co-founded in 2019 by entrepreneurs and Loyola Marymount University classmates Patrick Utz, Matthew Chang and Mohammed Hayat and developed an AI-powered regulatory intelligence platform.
Utz, who serves as the company’s CEO, told Legaltech News in an email that Abstract aims to “use natural language AI to abstract existing and changing laws, to make government more accessible.”
Intended to provide customers with insights into the risks and opportunities regulatory changes present to their companies, Abstract’s platform uses large language models (LLMs) and retrieval augmented generation (RAG) to synthesize data on rules and regulations and provide usable insights. The platform is built with a multi-model approach, incorporating LLMs such as OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet, as customized by Abstract.
The new funding is intended to enhance Abstract’s ability to integrate information from diverse data sources, including draft legislation and comments on proposed rule changes in addition to final rules and laws.
“The new investment will primarily be devoted towards accelerating our research and product development,” Utz said, adding that he hoped the new capital will enable the company to build a platform “able to distill granular implications that shifts across regulatory policy, news, and media have on an organization.”
The new funding brings total investment in the company to more than $9 million. Bonfire and Communitas were both new investors; prior investment had come from an array of venture funds and individual angel investors.
The investment represents at least the second time Bonfire has supported a legal tech company. In 2024, the venture capital firm participated in a $25 million series A funding round for personal injury startup Supio.
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