Ankar, an AI platform revolutionizing the patent protection lifecycle, has successfully raised $20 million in a Series A funding round. The investment was led by European venture capital firm Atomico, with significant participation from existing investors Index Ventures, Norrsken VC, and Daphni. This new capital will fuel the company's expansion into the US and further development of its AI-powered operating system for innovation.
Modernizing an Outdated System
The traditional patent process is notoriously slow and fragmented, often taking up to two years to secure intellectual property rights. Teams typically rely on a scattered collection of documents, spreadsheets, and outdated systems, creating significant inefficiencies. This cumbersome workflow not only slows down innovation but can also discourage inventors from filing for protection altogether.
An AI-Powered Operating System for Innovation
Ankar's platform directly confronts these issues by unifying the entire patent lifecycle into a single, secure digital workflow. It utilizes artificial intelligence to perform instant novelty and prior-art analysis across a vast database of over 150 million patents. This enables legal and R&D teams to transform invention disclosures into high-quality draft applications in a fraction of the time.
Functioning as an intelligent assistant rather than a complete autopilot, the platform provides strategic guidance on claim strength and scope. This approach empowers patent professionals, delivering an average 40% boost in productivity and freeing up hundreds of hours for higher-value work. Ultimately, it helps organizations build stronger, more defensible patent portfolios in an increasingly competitive landscape.
Security and Trust in the AI Era
Co-founders Tamar Gomez and Wiem Gharbi leveraged their experience building mission-critical software at Palantir to embed enterprise-grade security into Ankar's foundation. The platform is designed for the high confidentiality required in patent workflows, ensuring sensitive innovation data remains isolated and protected. This focus is particularly vital as generative AI accelerates the need for robust IP defense.
The company underscored its commitment to security by achieving ISO 27001 compliance early in its development, a standard often pursued much later. To ensure accuracy, Ankar's AI models are grounded in verified data sources, preventing reliance on unverified information. These foundational design principles have been crucial in earning the trust of major corporate clients like L'Oréal.
Strategic Investment to Fuel Global Expansion
This latest $20 million investment brings Ankar's total capital raised to $24 million, providing substantial resources for its next growth phase. The company plans to double its 20-person team, with a focus on scaling its engineering, product, and go-to-market organizations. A key objective is to support rising demand from enterprise customers across Europe and the United States.
Atomico partner Andreas Helbig highlighted the founders' deep technical expertise and the platform's perfect market timing, evidenced by its adoption by Fortune 500 companies. Ankar is already trusted by industry leaders and global law firms such as Vorys, demonstrating its value in turning IP into a strategic growth driver. The investment validates Ankar's mission to build the core infrastructure for global innovation.
As intangible assets increasingly constitute the majority of corporate value, Ankar is positioning itself as a critical enabler of modern innovation. The company's long-term vision is to become the definitive software layer that orchestrates how ideas are transformed into defensible global patents. This strategic funding round marks a significant step toward realizing that ambition in the rapidly evolving AI era.