QVentures Invests in Semeris, A LegalTech AI Start-Up for Financial Services

Global News

20
Aug
2021

Editor

QVentures has announced their latest fund investment into Semeris, a legal AI startup that builds contract analysis products for the financial sector.

Designed to help financial services companies  review, analyse and summarise legal documentation, Semeris aims to deliver “superhuman powers” for anyone interacting with complex legal documents. Semeris dramatically cuts investment analysis time with a mix of natural language processing, machine learning, and human curation. The solution also allows the comparison of terms and specific contract language across entire markets. Once analyzed, the Semeris libraries can speed up contract reading and reviewing by up to 10 times. 

Semeris serves customers in a US and European collateralized loan obligation (CLO) market, from small boutique investment firms to the largest Global Banks (G-SIBs - global systemically important banks). Besides US expansion, this investment speeds up entry into the analysis of additional asset classes.

As a plug and play tool, Semeris differentiates itself from other data extraction tools in the market by being able to compare how the language used in transaction documents varies from deal to deal and evolves over time.

Peter Jasko, Co-Founder and CEO of Semeris, says: “QVentures took the time to really understand our business and help set Semeris up for successful growth. The closing of this funding round will spearhead the expansion of our capital markets legal AI products into the US.” With a 20+ year career in technology and finance, Peter left banking in 2008 and has had three successful fintech exits. 

Harveer Bharaj, Principal at QVentures, says: “We're excited to be supporting the two experienced founders in taking Semeris out to market across Europe and the USA. The team's deep experience in capital markets and building and scaling tech ventures has been reflected in strong feedback from both existing and potential customers who are excited by how Semeris can help accelerate their investment operations and open up opportunities in new markets.”

QVentures Managing Partner, Robert Walsh has known Peter for 20 years and is enthusiastic about the investment: “I am delighted to be backing Peter and it is exciting to see my old world of structured credit merging with Venture Capital. I would have loved to have an invaluable tool like Semeris when I worked in investment banking and am confident it will enhance the productivity of users going forward.”