DocuSign acquires AI-powered contract administration agency Lexion

as docusign Allegedly It is buying an organization itself, whereas exploring a sale to non-public fairness.

on Monday, DocuSign introduced that he’s shopping for lexion, a contract workflow automation startup for $165 million. The buy comes as DocuSign will increase funding within the contract administration area, having not too long ago launched DocuSign IAMA service that goals to attach numerous parts of the company contract formation and negotiation course of.

Lexion was based within the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2), the AI-focused analysis arm of the nonprofit Allen Institute. Oberoi co-founded the corporate with former Microsoft Research software program growth engineering head Imad Elwany and engineering veteran James Baird; Oberoi beforehand co-founded the survey platform Precision Polling, which was acquired by SurveyMonkey quickly after its launch.

Lexion began as a “smart” repository for contracts, permitting authorized groups to ask pure language queries about paperwork. But it steadily expanded with instruments to handle totally different use instances and challenges in doc creation for not solely authorized departments, but additionally groups throughout gross sales, IT, HR, and finance.

Lexion had raised $35.2 million in enterprise capital earlier than the acquisition from buyers together with Khosla Ventures, Madrona and Point72 Ventures.

According to DocuSign CEO Alan Thiegesen, Legion’s expertise will allow DocuSign clients to achieve a “more detailed” understanding of their contract constructions and information, in addition to achieve insights and higher determine potential dangers. DocuSign will use Lexion’s AI fashions for contract creation and negotiation, whereas Lexion will construct integrations with DocuSign’s merchandise and options.

The buy comes at a big second for DocuSign, valued at about $12.5 billion, which is claimed to be within the means of promoting itself to a non-public fairness agency. Presumably to make its books extra engaging to followers, DocuSign introduced plans to put off ~6% of its workforce – about 400 jobs – in February.

Reuters reported in January that Bain & Hellman & Friedman are among the many last bidders in an public sale for DocuSign in what may very well be one of many largest leveraged buyouts in 2024.

DocuSign’s different acquisitions embrace SpringCM (for $220 million in July 2018), a cloud platform for gross sales contract administration, and Seal Software (for $188 million in February 2020), an organization specializing in AI-powered contract analytics.