Lex Machina Closes $4.8M Series A Funding Led by Cue Ball Capital

“Moneyball” IP Litigation Data and Analytics Used by Companies and Law Firms

PALO ALTO, CA – May 1, 2013 –  Lex Machina announced today that it closed a $4.8 million Series A funding round led by Boston-based Cue Ball Capital.  Existing investors XSeed Capital, Costanoa Venture Capital, and Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang also participated in the round. Lex Machina will use the funds to add new product features and expand its sales team to serve rapidly growing corporate and law firm demand for its intellectual property (IP) litigation data and analytics. Patent litigation in the U.S. is exploding.  According to Lex Machina’s data:

  • Total patent cases filed have increased over 100% in the last three years
  • Three $1B+ verdicts for patent infringement have been awarded in the last eight months
  • Median damages awards in patent cases now exceed $4M

In this high-stakes environment, companies and the law firms that serve them seek “Moneyball” intelligence that best enable them to anticipate, manage and win IP disputes.

“Lex Machina is using big data analytics to bring insight into an important area of the legal information services space and can deliver real value.  We are thrilled to be working with the team at Lex Machina to build this business” said Cue Ball Chairman and General Partner, Dick Harrington.  Prior to Cue Ball, Harrington served as CEO of Thomson for over a decade, leading its transformation into one of the world’s leading information services businesses.

“Lex Machina helps companies make better decisions that have real ROI by bringing objective rigor to a traditionally subjective activity,” said Cue Ball Partner John Hamel, who is joining the Board.

Roy Martin, a former senior executive at Thomson’s legal group, also participated in the round and joined Lex Machina’s board.  He was chief strategy officer for their global legal and regulatory group, and most recently CEO of their Tax & Accounting division.

“We are thrilled to add Cue Ball and Roy to our set of investors,” said Lex Machina CEO Josh Becker.  “Their deep domain expertise will provide us with significant value as we continue to transform legal decision-making with actionable intelligence and insights gleaned from legal data.”

ABOUT LEX MACHINA
Lex Machina is a Silicon Valley startup that spun out of a joint project of Stanford University Law School and Computer Science Department.  Its technology includes machine learning and a state-of-the-art natural language processing (NLP) legal text classification system.  It provides subscription access to data and technology-enabled analytics regarding:

  • Litigation decision support
  • Peer company benchmarking
  • Patent portfolio evaluation
  • Outside counsel selection and management

ABOUT CUE BALL CAPITAL
Cue Ball is a Boston-based venture and early growth equity firm focused on enterprise Internet, SaaS, digital media, and specialty commerce. The Partnership consists of former entrepreneurs and notable business leaders including the Founders of the internet services firm ZEFER, the CEO and senior leadership that transformed Thomson into the world’s largest information media company, Thomson Reuters, and the lead investors and former Chairman behind Chipotle and Redbox. In line with the firm’s emphasis on human capital, Cue Ball’s investor base (The Cue Ball Collective) is a brain trust of leading industry entrepreneurs, executives and thought-leaders. The Cue Ball portfolio includes Livefyre, Longtail Video, ideeli, MiniLuxe, ScrollMotion, and Stylesight. For more information please visit the Cue Ball website at www.cueball.com