Thomson Reuters Acquires AI Legal Startup Casetext for $650M
Thomson Reuters pays $650 million in cash for Casetext, a legal tech company that uses GPT-4 to power its AI assistant for lawyers. The acquisition supports the media and information giant's plan to integrate generative AI across its professional verticals.
Thomson Reuters agrees to acquire legal tech startup Casetext for $650 million in cash as part of its broader strategy to bring generative AI solutions to its customers. The deal, which is expected to close in the second half of 2023 pending regulatory approval, highlights a major move by the information giant to revolutionize how legal professionals work.
Founded in 2013, Casetext initially builds a community for attorneys to share legal knowledge before pivoting to artificial intelligence and machine learning. Its flagship product, CoCounsel, uses OpenAI's GPT-4 language model to automate workflows like document review, legal research memo preparation, deposition preparation, and contract analysis for its base of over 10,000 law firms and corporate legal departments.
This acquisition fits perfectly into Thomson Reuters' long-term plan to embed generative AI into its core business verticals, which include legal, tax, accounting, and news. With the company recently announcing a massive $10 billion earmarked for mergers and acquisitions and a $100 million annual investment specifically for AI, Casetext serves as a foundational piece in expanding its market potential for AI-powered professional tools.