An Edinburgh-headquartered legal AI startup firm has raised £52 million in a series B funding round – in one of Scotland’s largest tech deals in recent years.

Wordsmith AI is capitalising on growing demand from corporates to bring legal work in-house, reduce spend on outside counsel, and measure the impact of legal work across the business.

The business has grown rapidly as enterprise legal teams are rethinking how work gets done – with AI poised to support on common legal process work such as contract reviews, drafting, and legal workflows.

“Legal does not need another filing cabinet, and it does not need another copilot that simply helps one lawyer work faster,” said Ross McNairn, CEO and co-founder of Wordsmith. 

“Wordsmith is the front door that does the work. Requests come in, AI agents process the routine, lawyers approve what needs judgment, and every step is recorded as it happens. We are building the system legal runs on: one place where work comes in, gets owned, gets completed and measured.”

The series B funding round was led by London-based Highland Europe and Index Ventures among others. The round comes alongside an expansion of Wordsmith’s product and new enterprise customer wins, including Sage and Starling. It follows a year of rapid growth for Wordsmith which is now used by more than 500 companies, including BT, Financial Times, Safelite, Trip.com, and Canva.  

Wordsmith will use the funding to accelerate development of its AI platform, scale towards 300 people globally by the end of the year and “double down” on the US market. It has been specifically designed for in-house legal teams – or ‘general counsel’ – rather than law firms.

Jean Tardy-Joubert, Partner at Highland Europe comments: “What is most exciting about Wordsmith is that this is a tool built for companies, rightfully involving all employees in legal affairs, in coordination with the in-house legal team. By taking a vertical approach, Ross and the Wordsmith team have established themselves at the forefront of the sector, with demonstrable market traction, impressive growth and more than 500 satisfied customers.”

Wordsmith was founded by CEO Ross McNairn, CTO Volodymyr Giginiak, and COO Robbie Falkenthal. McNairn is a former lawyer turned technology executive who helped scale Perk from $1m to $200m in revenues and previously held senior roles at Skyscanner before its $1.7 billion exit. Giginiak spent more than a decade at Facebook and Instagram and over six years at Microsoft. Falkenthal spent more than six years at KPMG Dublin and later held senior leadership roles at Perk.