Robin AI, backed by Revolut co-founder Nik Storonsky, is seeking a rescue buyer after failing to secure a $50 million funding round. The London-based legal AI firm, which has raised over $50 million previously, is now for sale on an insolvency marketplace, risking nearly 200 jobs. Despite having clients like PwC and UBS, Robin AI has not turned a profit, posting £12 million in losses with £8 million in annual revenue. The sale highlights concerns over an AI market bubble.

A survey by Robin AI of 4,152 people across the US and UK found that only 30% at present would trust a legal AI tool ‘to represent them on its own’. Meanwhile, only 10% said legal services are ‘truly accessible to everyone’, and just 23% believe good quality legal services are available to the average person.Also, respondents said they would need a 57% discount to choose a legal AI system over a human lawyer. I.e. the general public doesn’t yet really value the output – or expect to value the output – of legal AI systems. Yet, some people would still use that approach out of desperation in order to find an affordable legal provider. Although, the majority would prefer not to, if possible, for now

‘There will be two types of lawyer, those who are enabled by AI and those who don’t do much work,’ Tramale Turner tells Artificial Lawyer.Turner recently joined genAI pioneer Robin AI as its CTO, replacing co-founder James Clough who has gone on to Encord, a data curation startup. It’s fairly unusual for a CTO to leave just as a company is getting into its stride, but Turner is excited to take on the role and sees great growth ahead.So, first question, how did you get to know contract review-focused Robin AI and its CEO Richard Robinson, who previously worked at Clifford Chance?Turner explains that among other roles, he has been CTO of TaxBit, Head of Engineering at Stripe, and he has held leadership roles at Nintendo and Volkswagen Group, before recently deciding to look for a new challenge. He was introduced to Robinson, they hit it off, and the rest is history.So, what about replacing the co-founder Clough? How has that been? ‘James wanted a different path,’ Turner notes and of course, the two never worked together, so for him Robin AI and legal tech is a whole new world. And one that he’s very excited about.Immediately he targets the main challenge for corporates, as he sees it. ‘CLM has not broken through to be the de facto tool [for inhouse teams],’ he says and returns to a theme often shared by Robin AI: that inhouse legal teams need a genAI plus managed services provider, such as theirs, to handle their contracting needs – not a very large and complex to implement CLM system. And of course, the CLM companies may well have a different viewpoint.He also notes that they continue to work with some law firms – something that most CLM companies avoid, in part because that’s not the best deployment of those platforms.So, where is Robin AI now? It started in the UK back in 2019, played with various types of AI support, then saw genAI coming down the tracks and leapt into a relationship with Anthropic