Laurel Raises $100 Million to Transform Professional Services Industry

<p><strong>SAN FRANCISCO<&sol;strong> &&num;8212&semi; Laurel&comma; which bills itself as the world’s first AI Time platform&comma;  has raised &dollar;100 million in Series C funding led by IVP&comma; with participation from GV &lpar;Google Ventures&rpar;&period; Laurel plans to use this investment to scale its AI time platform and accelerate to solve what it calls the &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;time intelligence challenge&&num;8221&semi;—the inability for knowledge industries to accurately map time to business outcomes&period; In the age of AI&comma; quantifying and understanding human capital goes from a &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;nice to have” to a &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;cannot exist without” for enterprises&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>In addition to IVP and GV&comma; new investors in the round&comma; which consists of primary and secondary funding&comma; also include&colon; 01&period;a &lpar;created by former CEO and COO of Twitter &amp&semi; CRO of Facebook&rpar;&comma; DST Global&comma; Kevin Weil &lpar;CPO &commat; OpenAI&rpar;&comma; Alexis Ohanian&comma; Vladimir Fedorov &lpar;CTO &commat; GitHub&rpar;&comma; Arash Ferdowsi &lpar;co-founder of Dropbox&rpar;&comma; and Hans Tung&period; These investors join returning investors ACME&comma; Anthos&comma; Gokul Rajaram&comma; AIX Ventures&comma; and Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The funding comes as Laurel experiences rapid adoption among enterprise professional services firms like Ernst &amp&semi; Young&comma; Grant Thornton&comma; Freshfields&comma; and Crowell &amp&semi; Moring&period; Over the last 12 months&comma; Laurel grew ARR &plus;300&percnt; at double-digit scale&comma; increased usage by &plus;500&percnt;&comma; and works with &plus;100 of the top legal&comma; accounting&comma; and consulting firms across US&comma; UK&comma; EU&comma; Australia&comma; and Canada&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Laurel&&num;8217&semi;s AI Time platform&comma; now leveraged by hundreds of the world’s top enterprise professional service firms&comma; uses AI to automatically categorize&comma; describe&comma; and analyze how professionals spend their time on admin work&period; The platform&&num;8217&semi;s ability to connect time data with business outcomes has proven transformative for firms looking to maximize profits&comma; allocate their resources effectively&comma; and understand exactly what workflows to apply AI to and what agents to automate&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Customers using the company’s AI-native time platform report profit increases between 4-11&percnt;—driven by an additional 28 billable minutes per day per professional&comma; and increased realization of 1-4&percnt;&period; Laurel&&num;8217&semi;s ROI methodology has been independently audited and validated by a Big-4 Firm&period; The platform currently processes over &dollar;5B in gross market value for its customers&comma; and &plus;&dollar;360M of that amount is net-new value attributable to Laurel&period; In addition&comma; Laurel saves its professionals up to 80&percnt; in time recording&comma; freeing them to work on high-leverage work&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Laurel uniquely delivers value across lawyers&comma; clients&comma; finance&comma; and marketing by streamlining time capture&comma; enriching narratives&comma; and accelerating accurate billing&comma;” says David Cunningham&comma; Chief Innovation Officer at global law firm Reed Smith&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;As firms assess the impact of AI and fixed fees&comma; gaining granular intelligence with less effort is essential to redefining value within a firm and for its clients&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;I&&num;8217&semi;ve seen first-hand how Laurel can transform our approach to time intelligence&period; What used to be a manual process of time-keeping and entry is now significantly technology enabled&comma;” says Matt Newnes&comma; Partner and Tax Transformation leader at Ernst &amp&semi; Young&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Laurel doesn&&num;8217&semi;t just help our people to capture time that they spend on work more comprehensively&semi; it helps us to understand much more about how our teams work allowing us to identify best practices to help ensure we always drive the best outcomes for our clients&period; It has proven to be one of our most impactful AI investments&comma; delivering measurable results while laying the foundation for broader transformation initiatives&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Automating time is Laurel’s first step&period; Laurel’s AI platform turns its proprietary data around work and time to address the &num;1 business problem impacting knowledge industries&colon; operating without visibility into their supply chain&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Nobody has ever mapped the input of time to the output of outcomes&period; Industries like legal and accounting are best at understanding their input &lpar;time&rpar;&comma; but still struggle to price value&period; On the flip side&comma; industries like consulting and financial services understand value&comma; but operate blind to the true cost of creation&period; While all other industries have been obsessed about optimizing their supply chain&comma; the supply chain of knowledge work—which represents over 50&percnt; of Global GDP—has never been surfaced&period; This funding helps us solve this fundamental challenge while giving firms the data foundation they need to deploy AI strategically&period; We&&num;8217&semi;re not just automating time—we&&num;8217&semi;re creating the time intelligence layer that will transform how all knowledge industries operate&comma;&&num;8221&semi; says Ryan Alshak&comma; founder and CEO of Laurel&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;

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