[1]From Legal Futures’ Associate Seal Software [2].
Seal Software [1], the leading provider of content discovery and analytics solutions, today announced the acquisition of Apogee Legal [3], a global leader in advanced contract analytics for the enterprise, in a move that will bolster Seal’s award-winning suite of market leading Intelligent Content Analytics (ICA) AI solutions and its global management team.
The acquisition of Apogee Legal and the incorporation of its advanced analytics and legal expertise into the Seal ICA platform gives users access to a broader and deeper set of analytics and insight. That insight empowers users to manage their business’s legal and regulatory exposure, and extract valuable intelligence and data from complex documents such as vendor and customer contracts, financial documents, lease agreements and a plethora of others.
“Our clients have been clear that not only do they want an enterprise-class platform for contract analysis, but equally they need to solve their specific business problems,” said Ulf Zetterberg, co-founder and CEO of Seal Software. “Over the past four years the Apogee team, which includes more than 20 AI- literate lawyers, has helped many of our clients do just that, as well as proactively developing advanced analytic ‘packs’ for highly complex cases. Having Apogee officially join Seal means that all of our clients will now be able to access the Apogee team’s expertise and their advanced analytics.”
Apogee Legal, whose advanced analytics includes solutions for a variety of industries and applications, has been a Seal business partner since 2015 and has actively worked with Seal across a variety of industries and use cases. Since 2016, Apogee has released multiple advanced analytics packs, on the Seal platform, to solve for a variety of enterprise challenges, including:
- Procurement Insight – advanced analytics to address supplier risk, regulatory requirements and common business questions
- M&A Insight – analytics for M&A transactions with an emphasis on enterprise integration and risk management
- GDPR Insight – data privacy solutions and third-party risk for the enterprise
- Financial Services Suite – including QFCs, syndicated credit agreements and ISDA master agreements
“We could not be more excited to join our partners and officially become part of the Seal team,” said Jim Wagner, co-founder and managing director at Apogee. “Seal has established itself as the contract analytics platform of choice for many of the world’s largest organizations. Through this combination we will be able to provide those enterprises with an even more comprehensive set of solutions.”
“We have built Seal to be the most robust contract analytics platform available, and the Apogee team has fully taken advantage of those capabilities to serve many of our customers as well as to proactively develop advanced analytic ‘packs’ for highly complex use,” said Kevin Gidney, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Seal. “Combining the legal AI experts of Apogee with our ML specialists creates one of the largest Legal AI development teams on the planet.”
In connection with the transaction, Seal announced the following:
- All members of the Apogee team will be joining Seal and Seal will be expanding Apogee’s Charlotte, North Carolina, operations further as Seal’s east coast development center.
- Apogee co-founder, Matt Miller, will be responsible on an ongoing basis for leading both the Seal analytics production group and the Seal legal solutions team, and will have oversight of Seal’s Charlotte operations.
- Apogee co-founder, Steve Harber, a veteran of more than 20 years in the legal technology arena, will focus on building out the Seal legal solutions strategy and the Seal legal partner channel.
- Apogee co-founder, Jim Wagner, will become chief strategy officer for Seal. In his capacity as chief strategy officer, Wagner will work closely with the Seal executive team to create, communicate and ensure the execution of the strategic plan for the company.
Customer response to the combination of Seal and Apogee has been enthusiastic. “We have been working with Apogee and Seal to support our contract analysis for a number of years,” said Robert Jackson, executive vice president and general counsel of CyrusOne, Inc., a global data center provider. “We believe that artificial intelligence is an essential tool for the delivery of comprehensive and efficient legal services. Apogee has been a key partner to our legal team and has consistently provided customized solutions that leverage the Seal platform to support compliance, business intelligence and M&A. The marriage of the two companies should be a positive for us and for companies like us that want to get the most out of their contracts.”
Seal’s acquisition of Apogee is effective as of July 1, 2018, and all regulatory and other consents have been received.
The decision to combine Seal’s market-leading artificial intelligence platform with Apogee’s comprehensive advanced analytics suite for the enterprise, follows the announcement of Seal’s global partnership with DocuSign [4] on June 20, 2018, which will see Seal power DocuSign’s broader System of Agreement strategy to automate and connect the entire process of how agreements are prepared, signed, enacted and managed.
Seal Software also recently disclosed that it had secured a $30 million investment from Toba Capital, the company’s principal existing investor, to support its next stage of growth. Now ranked as one of the fastest growing companies in North America by Deloitte, in its most recent list of the Technology Fast 500, Seal Software is considered one of the most authoritative and innovative developers of AI technologies for the enterprise.