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“God of War” fans are in for a treat. Amazon announced today that Prime Video is getting a live-action series based on the extremely popular PlayStation game. While a premiere date has not been announced, “God of War” will be available on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories.

The show will follow Kratos, the God of War, who leaves his gory past in ancient Greece to reside in the Norse realm of Midgard. Kratos mourns the death of his wife and sets out on a treacherous journey with his estranged son, Atreus, to fulfill her dying wish — spreading her ashes from the highest peak. However, on this adventure, Kratos is forced to fight all kinds of new Gods and monsters as his bond with his son is tested.

The new “God of War” series will likely be a huge hit for Amazon. The announcement comes as the “God of War” sequel, “God of War: Ragnarök,” released to the public last month, caused a flurry of excited gamers to snatch up copies. Developed by Santa Monica Studio, PlayStation tweeted that “God of War: Ragnarök” was the “fastest-selling first-party launch game in PlayStation history.” The record-breaking game sold a whopping 5.1 million copies in the first week alone.

“The ‘God of War’ is a compelling, character-driven franchise that we believe will captivate our global customers as much with its expansive and immersive worlds as its rich storytelling,” said Vernon Sanders, head of global television at Amazon Studio, in a statement.

Amazon’s latest live-action series joins many other video game adaptations, such as HBO’s upcoming series, “The Last of Us,” Paramount+’s “Halo” and various Netflix series like “Arcane,” “Resident Evil” and “Witcher,” among others.

Amazon set to release a ‘God of War’ live-action series on Prime Video by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch

While the TechCrunch crew enjoys a tweet and a post from time to time, we also enjoy reading longer-form materials. So much so that we are compiling a year-end revue of our favorite reads.

This is not just a list of serious business books, or just fiction that was published this year.

Instead, we have put together a list of just our favorite stuff that we read this year. Some of it won’t surprise; I hope that some of it does — but given how literate the average TechCrunch reader is, perhaps I will be contentedly disappointed.

The following list is in no particular order. And while we may earn a dollar or two off of commissions if you buy one of the books below, we’re not doing this for the money. We just love books, and reading, and want to share some of our joy with you. (TechCrunch also has lists of recommendations from founders, and venture investors coming later this month!)

Hugs, happy holidays, and may your 2023 reading crop be fruitful.

This article contains links to affiliate partners where available. When you buy through these links, TechCrunch may earn an affiliate commission.

The best books TechCrunch read in 2022

Each recommender’s books are grouped, links go to Amazon. Summaries are via the TechCruncher in questions, at times lightly edited for clarity and format.

Rebecca Szkutak:

The Secret Life of Groceries: A super fun and interesting book about the history of grocery stores and what their supply chain looks like today. Yes, I’m a jumbo nerd.
Crying in H Mart:A lovely memoir that made me cry in the Goa airport.

Harri Weber:

Writing Down the Bones
You Are Here

From Harri: “Both my picks are rereads that gently address existential spirals with reassurance, through self love in the case of You Are Here, and through writing in the case of Writing Down the Bones.”

Ram Iyer:

Anno Dracula: It’s 1888 and Dracula has won the fight against Van Helsing & Co., married Queen Victoria, and turned a lot of London into vampires. And Jack the Ripper is a human who’s cutting up young vampire girls. A grim and stark whodunit featuring a variety of characters from popular fiction as well as real historical figures of the time.

Neesha Tambe:

Little Gods: Love seeing culture dynamics represented through fresh lenses. Educated immigrant experiences in the US are often not written about. The chapters weave between timelines and characters, making picking up the book absolutely addictive.
Atomic Habits: Okay okay. I know it’s old and basic, but I needed to establish better physical and mental habits coming out of deep pandemic. Recognizing that making 1% changes regularly can lead to big dividends made making daily decisions in line with long term goals, easier.
Untamed: An absolute must read, especially for people who have felt the constraints of society. An autobiographical collection of stories, the author breaks down toxic standards and encourages readers to identify and pursue their own true vision for happiness
The Prince: In an era where people believe that principles should be policy, this is a good reminder of the political *science* involved in governance and learning from past mistakes.

Dominic Madori Davis:

The Color of Law: An interesting look into how the federal government indirectly helped and upheld illegal housing discrimination in the US, and the impact that has had on the Black community in terms of wealth building, access to educational and city resources, and the stereotypes still associated with many Black neighborhoods today.
Token Black Girl: An honest memoir from a former Black fashion editor as she grappled with her childhood and eventual working life trying to assimilate into, and find acceptance rich, white environments. She talks about the psychological toll this took on her, the mental journey she is still on in unlearning self-hatred, and how she is finally coming to terms with loving her natural Black self.

Natasha Lomas:

Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne: The metaphysical poet’s life engagingly deconstructed

Amanda Silberling:

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow: I feel like this is one of those perfectly constructed novels that will be studied in weird (appreciative) liberal arts school fiction classes in fifty years (or, like, fifty days). It’s hard to pull off the kind of story that follows characters from the time they’re small children to fully-formed adults, but it’s a joy (and, at times, agonizing) to watch these two friensd grow from awkward artistic teens to niche-famous game developers who use their craft to navigate murky questions about how and why we make art and how it affects people. Even if you’re not a video game person, there’s a lot to love in this book, so long as you care about… uh…. art and people.
True Biz: I am always annoyed when people think you can only learn about things by reading nonfiction — case in point, True Biz taught me so much about Deaf culture, disability and the ever-present threat of eugenicist science. I love when fiction can help me empathize with people different from me, yet this book is more than that. It’s just an amazing story in itself, alternating among the points-of-view of various characters from different perspectives in the Deaf community: angsty teens fighting for their right to Deaf education, a teacher navigating her rocky marraige, a hearing parent of a Deaf child who must come to terms with her prejudices. This was the kind of book that I was sad to finish, because I wanted to spend more time with the characters who I so quickly grew to root for and love.

Devin Coldewey:

Ministry for the Future: Near-future fiction extrapolated directly from the present can be very weak, but Robinson is both unflinching and imaginative of what a climate crisis would look like, how it might play out, and what kind of bonkers moonshots might be necessary for us to continue to live on Earth.

Romain Dillet:

Abolish Silicon Valley: This book is an honest and engaging first-person story that showcases the hubris of Silicon Valley’s corporate culture. Wendy Liu depicts situations that are sometimes so absurd that she will make you laugh. She also takes a step back and looks at the political implications of startup culture and Silicon Valley.

Anna Heim:

A Very British Christmas
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
How to Be Good

Anna did not provide commentary on her picks, so I have decided that the way to Be Good is to spend Four Thousand Weeks each year having a Very British Christmas.

Alex Wilhelm:

The Golden Enclaves: Third book in a breakout fantasy series with one of the best protagonists I have ever had the pleasure of getting to know, and cheering on. I am going to re-read the whole series, again, I think this holiday period.
Priory of the Orange Tree:You know how they say that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover? I bought this beast strictly by dent of its heft. More or less it was a hugely chunky paperback, and I thought, well, I like fantasy, and this book must be good to get published at this length, right? Turns out I was right! Huge, interesting, good, and with characters I adored by the end. And dragons.

Here are the best books that TechCrunch read this year by Alex Wilhelm originally published on TechCrunch

This year was a big one for the smart home thanks to the actual introduction of Matter after a couple years of discussion and refining the standard. It’s still early days for the cross-brand compatibility layer, and it’s probably still something that should only be one factor in how you set up your smart home and select your devices, rather than the deciding factor.

Accordingly, some of the below items support Matter, but not all. Complexity of interoperability is definitely a consideration, but in the end the best smart home is the one that actually feels smart, regardless of what does or doesn’t talk to what.

If you’re looking to pick up some added smarts for the true smart home lover in your life, the following gifts should hit the spot.

This article contains links to affiliate partners where available. When you buy through these links, TechCrunch may earn an affiliate commission.

1. Philips Hue Gradient Signe lamps

Philips consistently makes great smart lighting products through its Hue lineup, and the Hue Gradient versions of its Signe table and floor lamps are no exception.

The Signe lamps are long, vertical light bars built into heavy cylindrical bases. It sounds simple because it is, but the Gradient version adds the ability to project multiple colors across the entire length of the bar. This is super useful if you’re using them in tandem with Philips’ Sync box for TV, but provides really nice accent lighting effects for virtually any room.

Price: $220 (table) or $330 (floor) from Amazon

2. Ikea Symfonisk Wi-Fi picture frame speaker

To complete the home theater setup in a way that’s relatively innocuous, consider adding a pair of Ikea’s Symfonisk flat speakers, which are powered by Sonos technology. Besides the dangling cord, which you can blend into most decor with a little creativity, there’s not much here to give away the fact that these actually output sound.

They make for the perfect rear speakers in a room where you don’t want to sacrifice aesthetics to get surround, and when you pair them up with one of Sonos’ sounders and its new Sub Mini, you have a great sound system for your TV without sacrificing a lot of square footage or bringing down the general vibes.

Price: $250 from Ikea

3. Level Lock+

The best new smart lock out this year has to be the Level Lock+, which uses Level’s genius design to give you a sophisticated smart lock that looks like an ordinary deadbolt. This new version adds Apple Home Key support into the mix.

Home Key works with modern iPhones and Apple Watches, and provides a dead simple and rock solid way to unlock and lock your door. The Home Key feature adds to the Level Lock’s existing remote and touch-based locking and unlocking options.

Price: $330from Apple

4. Ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium

Canadian smart thermostat maker Ecobee updated their lineup this year with two new models, including the Ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium and the Smart Thermostat Enhanced. The top-of-the-line Premium comes with high-end finishes and materials, as well as a built-in indoor air quality monitor.

The Premium model definitely looks better than any prior Ecobee thermostat, and it also supports Siri or Alexa voice control, as well as streaming Spotify or other Bluetooth audio. Plus, it can act as a hands-free intercom system if you need to relay something floor-to-floor or room-to-room.

Price: $250 from Ecobee

5. iRobot Roomba Combo j7+

Smart vacuum maker iRobot released their first new model in a little while this year, and it’s a big upgrade – the first U.S. Roomba to include both vacuum and mop in one. With the ability to distinguish carpets from floors, and a way to maneuver the mop pad down and up as needed, it’s the smart cleaner you need to get more thorough with your approach.

It can empty its vacuum bin via the included docking station, but it’ll need your help to empty and refill the mopping tank. Still less work than the manual way.

Price: $1,100 (discounted to $900 at time of publication) from Amazon

6. Oral-B iO Series 9 toothbrush

You would think that at this point the humble toothbrush would be a long-solved problem, but you would be wrong. Oral-B released its modern iO lineup of toothbrushes a couple of years ago now, but they’re still the best you can buy, and after two years I now have the first-hand recommendations of multiple dentists and hygienists to back that up.

The Oral-B iO Series 9 is the top of the line model, with different colored indicators to tell you when you’re brushing too hard or too soft, and a whole host of different modes – including a dedicated one for tongue cleaning. It also comes with a charging travel case in the box.

Price: $299 (discounted to $249 at time of publication) from Amazon

7. Aviron Impact Smart Rower

Aviron’s smart rowers are packed with tech, durable, quiet and well-built. The company has put a special focus on software development chops, employing actual game designers to build the interactive programs and apps that drive its workouts.

The Impact is the smaller of its two models, with a folding design that makes it easier to stow in a corner when not in use. The combo air and magnetic resistance system it uses helps provide a natural rowing feel without the adding complication of bringing actual water into the mix.

Price: $2,199 (discounted to $1,999 at time of publication) from Aviron

7 great gifts for smart home smarties by Darrell Etherington originally published on TechCrunch

The SPAC route to listing on public markets was incredibly popular in 2020 and 2021, but many companies that took this avenue didn’t exactly fare well after going public. So why did consumer car rental marketplace Getaround decide to list by merging with a blank-check company?

To answer that question, we need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

In hindsight, the 2020-2021 SPAC boom was unable to materially diminish the rising unicorn backlog. In 2022, unicorns continued to be minted faster than M&A and public offerings could convert their illiquid equity into liquid capital. It’s become a difficult time for high-priced startups: The traditional gateway to the public markets — the venerable public offering — remains closed, would-be acquirers are looking to trim costs instead of getting adventurous with their balance sheet and SPAC performance has proved abysmal.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money.

Read it every morning on TechCrunch+ or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

Per SPAC Insider data, companies that merged with blank-check companies recently have seen their value fall sharply. SPAC combos worth $300 million to $2 billion in pro forma equity are off around 71% on a median basis since 2009, to pick a data point. Smaller blank-check combinations are down even more over the same time frame, while larger deals did slightly better.

Why the SPAC route makes sense for Getaround by Alex Wilhelm originally published on TechCrunch

According to Grand View Research, the global sports betting market is expected to grow to $182.12 billion in revenue by 2030, up from $76.75 billion last year.

So we are seeing a number of startups throng around this market. Thus, HotStreak, a web3 platform for daily fantasy sports (DFS) contests, is betting that a decentralizing payments is an ideal solution for DFS platforms.

Meanewhile, you have Polymarket, a global information markets platform for sports betting; BetDEX, a global decentralized sports betting exchange; Aver, a decentralized betting and prediction exchange; and Divvy, a decentralized betting protocol. Plus, Super Bowl ads boosted crypto app downloads by 279%, so there is a burgeoning market.

And, thus is is that New York-based Frontrunner, a decentralized sports prediction market, has now raised a $4.75M funding round by Susquehanna Private Equity Investments LLP. Joingin get raise was Soma Capital, Gilgamesh Ventures, FBG Capital, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, Toy Ventures, Gaingels, Ledger Prime, WAGMI Ventures, and NOA Capital.

So what makes Frontrunner different?

One of its schticks is that is makes its bettering market look much more like a stock market-like experience. So, betting odds are presented more like stock prices. Users can buy shares of teams and players across markets like NFL, NBA and Premier League, using crypto, through a simplified trading interface. The company also plans to rollout ETF-style offerings, allowing uses to invest in teams, favorite ownership groups and league divisions. They will also be able to buy and sell using stablecoins.

Frontrunner is a zero gas fee, decentralized sports prediction market built on the blockchain, employing Injective, a protocol built on COSMOS, to support decentralized financial markets and order books, usinsing blockchains like Ethereum and Solana.

The company launched its testnet last quarter, and plans to add the FIFA World Cup 2022 market, and extend the offering in its existing leagues NFL, NBA and Premier League, by the end of this year.

Neil Zhang, Founder and CEO of Frontrunner said: “Rather than being a generalized prediction market product, we are launching Frontrunner focusing specifically on sports and esports markets… We believe that blockchain brings the sector closer to what users truly want when using a sports prediction market product.”

Speaking to me over a call, he added: “The majority of our competitors thus far are in the Solana ecosystem. But we have really had more of a multi chain type vision of the long term vision of our products. And so we’ve chosen first to be in the cosmos ecosystem, which we are really bullish on in terms of the interchain operability and some of the multi chain technologies that are being built there.”

“We are particularly excited about the possibilities of the Cosmos ecosystem that Frontrunner is built upon and believe it has a great future,” said Dean Carlson, Head of Digital Asset Investments at Susquehanna Private Equity Investments LLP, in a statement.

Eventually, next year, Frontrunner says it will give users social features, allowingthem to create group funds in which they team up by pooling capital and investing collectively.

The Company is in the process of obtaining an off-shore gaming license in the Isle of Man during the first quarter of next year, which would allow it to legally operate in a variety of jurisdictions including Canada, Mexico, parts of Europe, and much of South America, Africa, and Asia.

Despite the Crypto Winter and other scandals, blockchains seem here to stay in the sports betting market by Mike Butcher originally published on TechCrunch

The Twitter account @ElonJet, which uses publicly available data to track the whereabouts of Elon Musk’s private jet, has been permanently suspended from Twitter.

“My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk,” Musk tweeted on November 6. Over the last month, it seems Musk changed his mind.

Jack Sweeney, the University of Central Florida student who created @ElonJet, also operates similar bots that track private jet activity of tech moguls like Mark Zuckerberg. Yet none of Sweeney’s other accounts have been affected, including an account that tracks the travel of Elon Musk’s brother, Kimbal Musk.

The account has been a sore spot for Musk for a long time. In January, Musk DMed Sweeney on Twitter and offered the student $5,000 to delete @ElonJet, but he turned down the offer.

“Any chance to up that to $50k? It would be great support in college and would possibly allow me to get a car maybe even a Model 3,” Sweeney responded, according to DMs obtained by Protocol at the time.

Unfortunately, Musk would not be paying Sweeney’s tuition.

According to Sweeney, @ElonJet has been under close watch at Twitter HQ. He posted on his personal account that an anonymous Twitter employee told him that his account was visibility limited on December 2. Sweeney also posted a screenshot, allegedly leaked from Twitter’s internal Slack, that appears to show Trust and Safety VP Ella Irwin asking that the team immediately apply high visibility filtering to @ElonJet. TechCrunch emailed Irwin for confirmation of the message’s legitimacy.

After being suspended from Twitter, Sweeney set up an Elon Jet account on Mastodon.

Elon Jet, the Twitter account tracking Elon Musk’s flights, was permanently suspended by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch

Meet one dozen rising-star startups that are hard at work paving the future of Web3 infrastructure, DeFi, NFT and gaming applications at The Cross Chain Coalition Web3 Demo Day on January 11, 2023. This free online event will showcase pitches from 12 projects across the world’s fastest growing industry.

Each startup will have five minutes to pitch to an audience of influential industry investors and founders — just the kind of trajectory-changing exposure every startup needs.

Want to see what some of the best up-and-coming Web3 founders are building? If you wanna know, you gotta go. It’s easy, and it’s free — just register today and then tune in on January 11.

So, which startups will step into the spotlight? We’re ready to reveal two of the 12 projects.

Meet Mentaport — founded by Cynthia Alexander and Mariale Montenegro — a gaming infrastructure platform to create context-aware smart contracts and on-chain parameters for digital assets in a few lines of code. It allows developers and creators to easily set up rules and triggers for dynamic NFTs connected to locations, time events and more. The founders aim to change the future of blockchain gaming.

Meet Verbwire, founded by Justin Bojarski and Bankole Omodunbi. These former hedge fund traders spent decades on Wall Street and left it all behind with one goal in mind: help the next million+ devs dive into Web3. This January, they’ll debut a product that lets anyone, regardless of experience, create and deploy smart contracts.

Join us on January 11 and see for yourself what the brilliant minds behind 12 up-and-coming projects are building. The Cross Chain Coalition Web3 Demo Day, which takes place on January 11, 2023, is a joint production between the CCC and TechCrunch.

Register now for this free online event and reserve your seat at the virtual table.

Meet two of 12 rising startups pitching at Cross Chain Coalition Web3 Demo Day by Lauren Simonds originally published on TechCrunch

Revue, the newsletter platform acquired by Twitter in January 2021, is shutting down. The platform helped writers monetize their Twitter following by integrating their newsletters directly into the Twitter timeline, competing with platforms like Substack and Medium.

Revue sent a message to newsletter writers today declaring, “We’ve made the difficult decision to shut down Revue.” Writers have until January 18, 2023 to retrieve their data before it all gets deleted.

Twitter is working on making tweets 4,000 characters instead of 280, according to app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi and Elon Musk himself. But longer tweets don’t necessarily make up for the features that users will no longer access from Revue.

Twitter seems to be losing interest in many of its products relating to longform writing, including those that were birthed from acquisitions. Twitter acquired Scroll, an ad-free reading subscription, in May 2021, and then rolled it into the original, pre-Musk iteration of Twitter Blue, which had a feature that let users read ad-free articles from certain news outlets. But the subscription was not too popular, so when Musk waged layoffs across the company, Scroll and its team were on the chopping block.

Just yesterday, former Twitter founder and CEO Jack Dorsey started a Revue newsletter to publish his thoughts about the Twitter Files, a series of threads posted by journalists like Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi, whom Musk granted access to internal Twitter documents.

“well… after 17 hours, my career as a newsletter writer is coming to an end,” Dorsey tweeted today.

Twitter shuts down Revue, its newsletter platform by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch

It’s commonly held that solar panels need as much sun as they can get. That’s true, but only up to a point, as heat and other hazards can become a serious problem beyond that point, and solar panels can degrade pretty quickly.

SmartHelio wants to help prevent that from happening. The startup uses AI tech to measure live data (current, voltage, weather parameters) from solar plants, and offers suggestions for fixes when a solar array starts underperforming. The company has just raised $5 million to scale its product.

“Every summer, my parents would bring my brother and me to our ancestral village in India, which didn’t have electricity. The lack of good governance meant that it took a long time for the village to get electricity. This is what sparked my interest in decentralized energy solutions that don’t require external intervention,” Govinda Upadhyay, CEO at SmartHelio told TechCrunch.

“I am always thinking about how we can accelerate the adoption of clean energy. As I interacted with solar companies in India, Europe, and Africa, I realized that many of these companies were struggling with the performance of their solar plants, often due to the late detection of faults. This inspired me to start SmartHelio,” he added.

Upadhyay met his co-founder Neeraj Dasila, who was working at the energy department in the Indian government at the time. His journey matches Upadhyay’s in that he grew up in a remote village in the Himalayas that had little infrastructure.

The company is wading into a rapidly developing industry, but it has remarkably few direct competitors — the thrust of software/AI companies seems mostly focused on where to install solar or making solar more accessible. Glint Solar, for example, raised $3 million earlier this year for its AI-powered analytics tool to figure out where to build solar plants. Aurora Solar is in a similar space and closed a $250 million round in mid-2021. On the installation front, recent funding rounds include Enact Systems’ $11 million Series A, Zolar’s $105 million Series C, and Project Solar’s $23 million haul.

The funding round

SmartHelio was part of the W22 batch of Y Combinator and this round saw the incubator participating, in addition to a flurry of other investors from its native Switzerland and the U.S., including Collab Fund, Serpentine VC, ACE & Company, Pegasus Tech Venture, Gaingel VC, Soma Capital, and a number of angel investors.

SmartHelio raises $5M to fix solar panels before they break by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

VCs continue to bet big on legal tech. According to Crunchbase, firms have invested over $1 billion in legal tech companies, an uptick from the $512 million invested last year. Contract management vendors have benefitted in particular as contracting workloads increase; contracting teams at large organizations now manage an average of 19,000 contracts a year while the busiest organizations manage more than 50,000, according to a 2021 EY survey.

Angling to cash in on the gold rush, LexCheck, an AI-powered contract analysis platform, closed a $17 million Series A funding round today led by Mayfield Fund, the startup announced. Co-founder and CEO Gary Sangha says that the proceeds will be put toward fueling the expansion of LexCheck’s contract review tech, specifically focusing on R&D and sales and marketing.

“At a time of macroeconomic challenges, companies need a solution that accelerates key business processes,” Sangha told TechCrunch in an email interview. “My prior experience as an entrepreneur, along with LexCheck’s unique product development model, success, and ease of implementation, positions us to take on the potential headwinds in tech head-on.”

Sangha, a law lecturer at the University of Pennslyvania and a licensed attorney in the State of New York, founded LexCheck in 2015. After practicing securities law at Shearman & Sterling in New York City and White & Case in Hong Kong, Sangha founded Intelligize, a regulatory filings research platform that was acquired by LexisNexis in 2016.

“I’ve seen firsthand the complexity, heavy workload and time constraints faced by corporate legal teams, and how contracting can sometimes be a barrier rather than a business accelerator,” Sangha said. “I founded LexCheck to increase revenue by simplifying and accelerating commercial contracting processes across an entire organization.”

There’s evidence to suggest that AI, indeed, can make a difference where it concerns contracting. A study cited by legal workflow automation vendor Onit — not the most impartial source, to be fair — found that contract review software can make human reviewers roughly 33% more efficient by completing tasks such as first-pass contract reviews and delivering contract risk profiles.

LexCheck uses AI, including natural language processing, to support processes around editing and negotiating contracts. The platform attempts to standardize the contract negotiation process, providing organizations with digital playbooks that automate contract reviews by delivering redlines (i.e. edits), comments, insertions and deletions and automatically escalating deviations from “playbook-preferred” positions.

“These industry-standard playbooks are available for use immediately. If custom playbooks are required, LexCheck only requires between 24 and 50 sample documents to train the AI,” Sangha explained. “LexCheck’s products are built by practicing lawyers in collaboration with linguists and software engineers … Our mission is to create solutions that work the way lawyers need them to work, and this staffing model helps us achieve this goal.”

LexCheck competes with a host of companies in the contracting space including Blackboiler, LawGeex, LegalOn, ThoughtRiver, Luminance and Ontra. Lexion, which was incubated at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, uses machine learning and AI to automate aspects of contract management. Terzo recently raised $16 million for its tech that automatically extracts key data from contracts. Not to be outdone, ContractPodAi leverages IBM’s cloud AI tech to streamline contract management and (in theory) reduce the burden on corporate in-house legal teams.

The size of the segment isn’t terribly surprising considering the opportunity it presents. In-house lawyers are already using contract tools more than any other form of legal tech, according to a recent Bloomberg Law survey. Over half of the survey respondents said that they actively use contract management programs.

Sangha claims that LexCheck’s solution can be implemented more quickly than most and uniquely requires only a small sample set of contract redlines to train its AI for custom playbooks. It can also be integrated with existing contract lifecycle management solutions, he notes, complimenting — not replacing — their capabilities.

Regardless of whether that’s true, LexCheck appears to have notched some size of foothold in the market, tripling its customer base to include some of the world’s largest financial institutions, tech providers and “top law firms” (although Sangha wouldn’t name names). Sangha wouldn’t disclose revenue figures when asked, saying only that LexCheck “continues to experience significant growth” and is “optimistic” about future funding.

“Business leaders have four critical priorities that impact contracting teams — reducing costs, improving risk management, digitizing the business and enabling growth — all of which LexCheck can help with,” Sangha added. “Contract management solution implementations can be time-consuming and challenging to deploy, often requiring significant oversight and involvement from IT teams. Deploying LexCheck is quick and seamless, reducing the IT team’s burden.”

LexCheck, which is based in New York, has 32 employees currently. To date, the startup has raised $22 million.

LexCheck raises $17M to automate common contracting processes by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch