Sandstone, a new platform designed to transform in-house legal departments, has officially launched with a $10 million seed funding round. The investment was led by prominent venture capital firm Sequoia, signaling strong confidence in the company's mission. Sandstone aims to eliminate operational bottlenecks by creating an AI-native system that unifies legal data, workflows, and business context.
Addressing a Systemic Legal Bottleneck
As businesses accelerate, their legal teams often struggle to keep pace, becoming an unintended bottleneck to growth. This inefficiency stems from critical institutional knowledge being scattered across disparate systems like emails, Slack threads, and document folders. Consequently, lawyers spend valuable time searching for information and performing repetitive tasks, hindering their ability to provide strategic value.
Founder-Led Innovation
The company was founded by Nick Fleisher and Jarryd Strydom, who bring complementary experiences to the problem. Strydom lived the daily frustrations firsthand as in-house counsel, buried under administrative tasks and information requests. Fleisher observed the same systemic lack of context at a larger scale while leading McKinsey's legal tech practice.
The AI-Native Solution
Sandstone presents itself as the first platform purpose-built for AI-native legal departments. It functions by creating a single, intelligent system that centralizes a company's legal expertise and operational history. This approach creates what the company calls "context in motion," turning preserved institutional knowledge into a tangible competitive advantage.
The platform enables legal teams to deploy their own AI agents within minutes to automate intake, triage, and other workflows. These agents integrate directly into the tools business teams already use, including Slack, Salesforce, and email. This seamless integration is designed to streamline processes and ensure legal expertise is applied consistently across the organization.
Investor Confidence and Market Validation
The significant $10 million seed investment underscores a strong belief in Sandstone's potential to disrupt the legal tech landscape. Bogomil Balkansky, a partner at Sequoia, highlighted the founders' unique positioning, stating that their combined experience makes them ideal to transform institutional knowledge into intelligent workflows. The platform's design, built by in-house experts for their peers, was cited as a key differentiator.
Even in its early stages, Sandstone has gained considerable market traction, partnering with dozens of in-house teams from fast-growing startups to Fortune 500 corporations. Early adopters have reported significant improvements, including dramatic reductions in task turnaround times and enhanced visibility into operational bottlenecks. These initial results provide tangible evidence of the platform's return on investment and practical impact.
A Vision for the Future of Legal Tech
Sandstone's long-term vision extends beyond being just another software tool; it aims to become the primary way in-house legal teams work. The company's mission is to enable the first generation of AI-native legal departments. This shift is intended to empower lawyers to function as strategic business partners and reposition the legal function as a revenue center.
With its official launch and substantial backing from Sequoia, Sandstone is poised to redefine the operational framework for corporate legal teams. By leveraging AI to centralize knowledge and automate workflows, the platform directly addresses long-standing inefficiencies that have hampered legal departments. Its early success suggests a promising future in transforming in-house counsel into core strategic drivers of business growth.