Icertis raises $80M for AI-powered contract management

Intelligent contract management vendor Icertis on March 11 said it raised $80 million as enterprise customers are demanding easier-to-use content management systems.

"This is the future," said R "Ray" Wang, founder of Constellation Research, of AI-powered contract management.

"Customers are tired of managing a plethora of rules, workflows and conditions," he continued. So, they are moving towards AI-driven approaches and headless content management software.

The latest funding round brings the valuation of Icertis, based in Bellevue, Wash., to more than $2.8 billion.

Icertis, which competes with contract lifecycle management vendors such as DocuSign and SirionLabs, is expected to use the new funding to expand its sales and marketing footprint and build its partner network.

The vendor said it also plans to invest in the further development of AI and blockchain technologies.

Icertis' AI-powered contract management products can automatically extract attributes and clauses from contract documents, enabling customers to review records more quickly. The systems can also scan contracts for potential compliance problems and identify relationships between data in the contracts.

It's not new technology, or even technology limited to well-established tech vendors. Startups such as LinkSquares and Concord employ similar technology, powered by natural language processing and cognitive search.

"AI can help with reducing human errors, improving automation," Wang said.

This is the future.

But Icertis, founded in 2009, has "done a good job with modernization and [has] a great standing in the market," Wang said.

Forrester recently ranked Icertis as a leader in the contract management field.

Icertis was early to the cloud and that's helped the vendor considerably in the contract lifecycle management arena, Wang said.

"There are definitely upstarts that can disrupt them, but they have a good position," Wang said.