Qualcomm backs SpotDraft to scale on-device contract AI with valuation doubling toward $400M

Qualcomm backs SpotDraft to scale on-device contract AI with valuation doubling toward $400M

As demand grows for privacy-first enterprise AI that can run without sending delicate data to the cloud, SpotDraft has raised $8 million from Qualcomm Ventures in a strategic Series B extension to scale its on-device contract review tech for regulated authorized workflows.

The extension values SpotDraft at round $380 million, the startup told TechCrunch, almost double its $190 million post-money valuation following its $56 million Series B in February of last 12 months.

Across regulated sectors, enterprises have moved rapidly to check generative AI, however privateness, safety, and data governance issues continue to slow adoption for delicate workflows — particularly in authorized, the place contracts can embrace privileged data, mental property, pricing, and deal phrases. Industry research has constantly flagged data safety and privateness as key boundaries to wider GenAI deployment in skilled providers, pushing distributors like SpotDraft to pursue architectures that preserve core contract intelligence on the consumer’s device quite than routing it by means of the cloud.

At Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit 2025, SpotDraft demonstrated its VerifAI workflow working end-to-end on Snapdragon X Elite-powered laptops, executing contract review and edits offline while preserving the doc on the local machine. SpotDraft said web connectivity is still required for login, licensing, and collaboration options, however contract review, threat scoring, and redlining can run totally offline without sending paperwork to the cloud.

SpotDraft sees authorized as an early proving floor for on-device enterprise AI, arguing that delicate contracts often can’t be routed by means of exterior cloud fashions due to privateness, safety, and compliance constraints.

“The future of how enterprise AI is going to be — right now, there’s got to be AI that is close to the document, which is privacy critical, latency sensitive, [and] legally sensitive, and those are the things that will move on device,” said Shashank Bijapur (pictured above, left), co-founder and CEO of SpotDraft, in an interview.

SpotDraft says VerifAI’s on-device functionality extends past merely producing summaries, with the tool designed to apply playbooks and suggestions immediately inside Microsoft Word, the means authorized groups already work. “VerifAI will compare a contract against your guidelines, your playbooks, your prior policies,” said Madhav Bhagat (pictured above, proper), co-founder and CTO of SpotDraft.

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SpotDraft’s VerifAI works in Microsoft WordPicture Credits:SpotDraft

Bijapur told TechCrunch that the demand for on-device AI is rising most clearly in tightly regulated sectors, including protection and pharma, the place inside safety reviews and data residency necessities can slow or block the use of cloud-based AI instruments for delicate paperwork.

On-device fashions have quickly closed the hole with cloud-based techniques, each in output high quality and response occasions, Bhagat said. “Now we’ve come to a place where, in terms of eval, we are seeing as little as 5% difference between the frontier models, and some of these fine-tuned on device models,” he said, including that speeds on newer chips are now “one-third of what we get in the cloud.”

Since its launch in 2017, SpotDraft said it has reached more than 700 prospects, up from round 400 in February last 12 months, and counts Apollo.io, Panasonic, Zeplin, and Whatfix among its customers. The company said adoption is rising on its contract lifecycle administration platform, with prospects now processing over 1 million contracts yearly, contract volumes rising 173% year-over-year, and almost 50,000 month-to-month energetic customers. It also expects 100% year-over-year income development in 2026, after rising 169% in 2024 and posting the same development fee in 2025, though it didn’t share particular income figures.

SpotDraft plans to use the new capital to deepen its product and AI capabilities and increase its enterprise presence across the Americas, the EMEA area (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), and India, Bijapur said, including that Qualcomm’s involvement extends past financing into joint development and go-to-market efforts for on-device deployments. The startup’s on-device workflow is at the moment obtainable to a restricted set of consumers, and the founders anticipate it to increase more broadly as appropriate AI PC {hardware} turns into more widely obtainable.

Bengaluru- and New York-based SpotDraft said it has a team of 300-plus workers, including 15–20 in the U.S., the place COO Akshay Verma is based, and 4 to 5 in the UK, with the remainder of the workforce in Bengaluru.

To date, the startup has raised $92 million, including the latest Qualcomm Ventures funding. Its earlier traders embrace Vertex Growth Singapore, Trident Growth Partners, Xeed VC, Arkam Ventures, and Prosus Ventures.

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