s·Term SheetExclusive: EvenUp raises $150 million Series E at $2 billion valuation as AI reshapes personal injury lawBy Allie GarfinkleBy Allie GarfinkleSenior finance Reporter and author of Term SheetAllie GarfinkleSenior Finance Reporter and author of Term SheetAllie Garfinkle is a senior finance reporter for Fortune, covering venture capital and startups.
She Term Sheet, Fortune’s weekday dealmaking .SEE FULL BIO The EvenUp founding team.EvenUpRami Karabibar and Ray Mieszaniec were rejected from Y Combinator at least three times.
And that was just the beginning. “We lost track, but we had hundreds of meetings with VCs,” said Karabibar, who in 2019 cofounded legal AI startup EvenUp with Mieszaniec and Saam Mashhad.
“They kept saying to us: ‘What are you doing? Legal sucks, AI sucks, personal injury sucks.
Those are three negatives.’” Mieszaniec adds, “Some investors said: ‘Your founding team is great, but this is the dumbest idea.’” Karabibar, Mieszaniec, and I are talking five years later—and the conversation has radically changed.
Legal AI companies are some of the hottest in the market, and EvenUp, focused on the $61 billion personal injury space, has gone from chasing to being chased: The company has now secured its fourth funding round in two years.
EvenUp has raised a $150 million Series E, led by Bessemer Venture Partners, Fortune has learned. This brings the company’s valuation to north of $2 billion.
B Capital, SignalFire, Lightspeed, HarbourVest, Adams Street, and Broadlight Capital all invested in the round, as did the venture arm of Lexis Nexis owner RELX.
EvenUp’s total capital raised is now at $385 million, and the company is solving personal injury’s relentless paperwork blem. “The average case takes two years,” said Karabibar.
“We see cases dragged on far longer than they need to, and they settle for less than they should. Attorneys are grinding, doing 100 cases a year.
So, it’s hard for them to stay on top of everything.” EvenUp is growing in a moment where the economics of AI startups are in flux—you have to triage rising compute costs with customer pricing.
It’s a delicate dance: If a customer loves the duct, they’ll use it a lot, and you’d better have the compute to back that up (and be pricing accordingly so you don’t drown).
Success, they say, depends on dering quantifiable value; otherwise, a law firm customer just churns.
(One example: Karabibar and Mieszaniec say that EvenUp’s largest customer pays over $4 million annually, is clocking around $40,000 revenue per employee.) Right now, Mieszaniec says, as big of a legal practice as personal injury is, there are still cases that are getting left on the table.
The idea: That AI will help create enough efficiency that it changes what’s possible in terms of caseload, and for personal injury victims.
“Attorneys are bably turning down one or two cases,” Mieszaniec told Fortune. “Maybe half of these injury cases are actually represented by an attorney.
For the other half where you don’t have support, these cases are settling a lot lower.” Industries are often, I think, forged in the image of their customers.
And this will continue to be true at the intersection of personal injury law (which is experiencing its own floor-is-lava economics) and AI.
Personal injury is famously competitive and visceral, most known to outsiders as “the law firms with the billboards and commercials.” EvenUp has, so far, helped resolve more than 200,000 personal injury cases and more than 2,000 U.S.
firms are using the platform. Still, they have personal injury-focused competitors, from a16z-backed Eve to Supio. Companies Harvey, valued $5 billion, loom large.
“I don’t think there’s gonna be 100 players in this space,” said Karabibar.
“I think it’s going to be a winner-take-most dynamic, and ultimately it’s our game to lose.” Mieszaniec is even more direct: “It’s not winner-take-all. It’s the last man standing. And I don’t care.
We’re ready to stand here for as long as we have to.” See you tomorrow, Allie GarfinkleX: @agarfinks: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.comSubmit a deal for the Term Sheet here.
Joey Abrams curated the deals section of today’s . here. Venture Deals- FurtherAI, a San Francisco-based AI workspace designed for insurance, raised $25 million in Series A funding.
Andreessen Horowitz led the round.- ConCntric, a San Francisco-based AI-powered preconstruction platform, raised $10 million in Series A funding.
53 Stations led the round and was joined by Argonautic Ventures and others.- Tycho.AI, a Cambridge, Mass.-based developer of and AI systems for unmanned vehicles, raised $10 million in Series A funding.
FirstMark led the round and was joined by Pillar VC.- Hipp Health, a San Francisco-based clinical platform for behavioral health, raised $6.2 million in seed funding.
RTP Global led the round and was joined by Swift Ventures, Rackhouse Venture Capital, and Difference Partners.- Agio Ratings, a London, U.K.-based risk insights platform for digital assets, raised $6 million in funding.
AlbionVC led the round and was joined by Portage Ventures and MS&AD.
Private Equity- A conium of investors led by Advent International and Corvex Private Equity agreed to take Heidrick & Struggles International, a Chicago, Ill.-based leadership advisor, private for apximately $1.3 billion.
- EQT Growth invested €50 million ($58.6 million) in Harvey, a San Francisco-based developer of AI nology for legal and fessional services.- Davis-Standard, backed by Gamut Capital Management, agreed to acquire FB Balzanelli, a Milan, Italy-based manufacturer of automatic and semi-automatic coilers.
Financial terms were not disclosed. - Infinity Engineered ducts, a portfolio company of Turnspire Capital Partners, acquired Meklas Otomotiv, a Bursa, Turkey-based air springs manufacturer.
Financial terms were not disclosed.- Lebronze alloys, a portfolio company of Astorg, acquired Manufacture pour l’Extrusion d’Alliages, a Doulaincourt-Saucourt, France-based ducer of copper and copper alloys.
Financial terms were not disclosed.- Thetford Corporation, backed by Monomoy Capital Partners, acquired Dave Carter & Associates, an Ocala, Fla.-based supplier of parts and services to the RV and manufactured housing industries.
Financial terms were not disclosed.Funds + Funds of Funds- Bain Capital, a Boston, Mass.-based private equity firm, raised $14 billion for its 14th fund focused on companies in the consumer, health care, industrials, services, and nology sectors.Lessons from the Fortune AIQ 50The inaugural Fortune AIQ 50 list identified the top companies across a broad swath of industries that have made significant gress integrating artificial intelligence nology into their operations, leading to real impact.
The insights and experiences of these companies offer valuable lessons for all es.
Explore all of Fortune AIQ, and read the playbook below:–How Coca-Cola’s leadership developed a taste for AI that helped distribute the nology across its beverage empire.–AI came from , but the most advanced AI es are in every industry.–‘Our chapters will work for any enterprise’: Honeywell’s AI chiefs the strategies that helped the firm mature its AI efforts.–How Visa wove AI into every facet of the company by apaching it as both a science and an art.–Women CEOs are one common thread at some of the companies seeing the most success with AI.This is the web version of Term Sheet, a daily on the biggest deals and dealmakers in venture capital and private equity.
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