Robert Ambrogi Blog
In its second acquisition in a month, Onit, the Houston company that provides enterprise workflow products for corporations and corporate legal departments, has acquired AXDRAFT, a Y Combinator-backed company whose software automates the creation of routine contracts and legal documents.
Founded in 2017, the Ukrainian company says that its technology enables corporate legal departments to draft documents 10 times faster and complete contracts such as nondisclosure agreements and service agreements in under five minutes. Its customers include Sandoz and Louis Dreyfus Company.
AXDRAFT will operate as an independent subsidiary and will now be branded as “AXDRAFT, an Onit Company.”
Cofounders Yuriy Zaremba and Oleg Zaremba will continue to oversee AXDRAFT, with Yuriy as general manager and Oleg as CTO.
AXDRAFT was part of Y Combinator’s winter 2019 class in March 2019, raising $150,000 in preseed funding. A month later, it raised $1.1 million from a pool of U.S. investors, including the venture capital firm FundersClub.
“The acquisition of AXDRAFT underscores our continued commitment to innovation for all of our offerings and particularly in the area of contract lifecycle management,” Eric M. Elfman, Onit’s CEO and co-founder, said in a statement released by the company.
“In 30 days, we’ve added an AI-based contract management product that significantly streamlines contract review, and now with AXDRAFT, we offer lightning-speed, error-free and multilingual contract drafting.”
Just a month ago, Onit acquired McCarthyFinch, the New Zealand whose AI-driven contract management software helped automate contract reviews and approvals, and immediately unveiled two products built using that software: an artificial intelligence platform Precedent, and the first product released on the platform, ReviewAI.
AXDRAFT says that its proprietary algorithm can automate document drafting in multiple languages, including Chinese and Japanese. Using its algorithm, it says, a document of any complexity can be transformed into a simple Q&A process.
AXDRAFT is available immediately as a stand-alone, out-of-the-box document automation tool. To learn more about the acquisition, listen to the Onit podcast featuring Eric Elfman and Yuriy Zaremba or visit AXDRAFT online.
If you are interested in learning more about the acquisition, Onit has posted a podcast in which Elfman and Yuriy Zaremba discuss it in more detail.
Last year, K1 Investment Management, a Los Angeles private equity firm that specializes in investments in high-growth enterprise software companies, made a $200 million strategic investment in Onit. Shortly afterwards, cofounder and CEO Eric M. Elfman was a guest on my LawNext podcast to discuss the investment.
LawNext Episode 27: Founder Eric Elfman On Onit’s $200M Investment