In conversation with Eleanor Weaver, CEO of Luminance

This week, Mike Lynch OBE FREng FRS, Board Director at Luminance, speaks to the company’s newly appointed CEO, Eleanor Weaver, to discuss how the award-winning AI platform is disrupting the legal sector, the impact of the pandemic and Brexit on its business operations, and how the company is looking to scale in 2021. 

Invoke were founding investors in Luminance when the company first launched in 2016 and the Invoke team continue to play a crucial role in developing and expanding the business.

Mike: Eleanor, you recently joined Luminance as CEO. What made you take the role and what excites you about the company?

Eleanor: Ultimately, it was the technology and the attractiveness of leading a fast-growing global AI company. AI is finally at the stage where it can provide real solutions for complex business problems and Luminance is a company that will be at the forefront of this Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The business is already on a phenomenal growth trajectory. In less than five years, Luminance has scaled to a $100million valuation, over 300 customers in 55 countries, over 100 employees in four offices and a 40% increase in customers last year alone. These are incredible statistics for such a young company, and I think there is a huge amount of potential to build upon the momentum that has already been achieved.

Under my leadership, I now want to take an already-successful business to the next level and through the next phase of growth. It has all the ingredients: best-in-class UK technologists and mathematicians, world-leading investors and an incredible team to execute the vision, so it was a no-brainer of an opportunity.

Mike: A few years ago, legaltech was in its early stages but we can now see that the market has become fairly crowded. How will you ensure that Luminance remains the market leader in this space?

Eleanor: First and foremost, Luminance is an AI company. Our technology uses machine learning to read, understand and analyse data. This could be for analysing legal documents, employment contracts, medical notes or even for a market intelligence review. The possibilities are endless.

When Luminance was formed, there were a variety sectors in which it could have been deployed, but legal made the most sense. Nowadays, with corporations owning so much data and documentation, lawyers are now expected to sift through hundreds - if not thousands - of documents for an M&A due diligence review, an employment contract review or an investigation, making it practically impossible for lawyers to read all of the information contained within the datasets they are dealing with on a daily basis. This has meant that AI is no longer a ‘nice to have’ but a core necessity for companies worldwide.

In the legaltech space specifically, it’s important to remember that not all tech is created equal. A lot of these companies are still relying on outdated approaches to technology - this means that they require a lot of machine training and programming before legal teams can even get up and running, and they inevitably become redundant with every new legal change. Luminance is offering something completely unique. From minute one, lawyers are able to gain unparalleled insight into their dataset across an unlimited range of use cases.

I think in years to come, legaltech companies relying on these legacy approaches to technology will crash and burn, and Luminance’s flexible machine learning technology will continue to stand head and shoulders above the rest. Of course, by that point, our focus on the legal sector will just be one string to our bow, with the applications of Luminance expanding far beyond this particular vertical.

Mike: Luminance has seen incredible success in such a short space of time – in under five years, the company now has 300 customers which includes international law firms, Big Four accountancy firms and Fortune 500 companies. Where does Luminance go next?

Eleanor: Luminance is a next-generation enterprise AI company. We are incredibly proud to have backing from you and the Invoke team, and have seen the success of companies like Darktrace, Featurespace and Sophia Genetics. We very much see ourselves on the same trajectory.

What is truly exciting about Luminance is the flexibility of the technology. When we launched in 2016, the tool was targeted at corporate lawyers to assist with due diligence reviews in mergers and acquisitions (M&As). In that short space of time, the platform is now used to power over 26 use cases and this varies from Brexit reviews to lease analysis. We’re also now servicing in-house legal teams with recent wins including Delta Capita and South American airline, Avianca. Every company in the world has an in-house legal team which makes our addressable market almost never-ending, and that’s just in the legal sector.

Mike: You’re a UK-born-and-bred company with a HQ in London, supported by your Cambridge R&D hub. How does the UK continue to support its tech successes?

Eleanor: We’re incredibly proud to be a British tech company. Our roots are firmly planted in the ‘Silicon Fenn’ ecosystem in Cambridge, where our techies develop our core machine learning technology at a staggering rate, and all of our sales, marketing and operations continue to run from our London HQ. I think the UK is very good at two key things: academic research and investing in our people. At Luminance, these two things are our biggest assets, as I’m sure they are for most technology companies, so ensuring that the UK remains a global leader in these remits is crucial.  

I think the Government are placing big bets on technology, and AI in particular, as a national asset and a key driver of future economic growth. They have set the ambition of achieving a 10% increase in UK GDP through AI by 2030, so it’s clear that technologies like Luminance will be fundamental to Britain’s economic recovery post-Covid. Employment in the UK tech sector has also increased by 40% in the last two years alone, which indicates just how important the industry is for a country facing a 5% unemployment rate.

Looking ahead, and particularly since Brexit, I think programmes like the Tech Nation Visa are crucial if we want to continue attracting the type of technology know-how that has allowed Britain’s tech sector flourish over the past 20 years. Equally, it’s encouraging to see tech companies like Deliveroo and Darktrace choosing to list here in London, and the Government must work hard to create the right environment to encourage more best-in-class tech companies to remain in the UK and allow the benefits to be felt here too.