AI: Thomson Reuters will buy startup for BRL 3 billion – 06/27/2023 – Market

Thomson Reuters said on Monday it had agreed to acquire Casetext, a legal startup with an artificial intelligence assistant for legal professionals, in a $650 million upfront deal. .

Thomson Reuters chief financial officer Michael Eastwood said last month the company plans to spend about $100 million a year to invest in artificial intelligence (AI), which will be separate from its merger budget. and acquisitions of the news and information company, which is about $10 billion through 2025.

One of Casetext’s flagship products is CoCounsel, an artificial intelligence legal assistant launched in 2023 and powered by GPT-4, the engine used in Bing, Microsoft’s chatbot. AI provides document review, legal research memos, deposition preparation and contract analysis in minutes, Thomson Reuters said in a statement.

The startup gained early access to OpenAI’s large GPT-4 language model, which allowed it to develop solutions with the new technology and refine use cases for legal professionals, he added.

The firm employs 104 people and its clients include more than 10,000 law firms and corporate legal departments.

The Casetext acquisition is another step in bringing generative AI solutions to customers, said Steve Hasker, President and CEO of Thomson Reuters.

Generative artificial intelligence is a type of artificial intelligence that generates new content or data in response to a user’s request.

The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2023, subject to specific regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.