IP Copilot wants to use AI to turn your Slack messages into patents

IP co-pilotA startup using artificial intelligence to modernize intellectual property management today announced it has raised $4.2 million in seed funding, led by Salesforce Ventures and Preface Venture Capitalparticipants from next generation venture capital firm and symbol.

The Tennessee-based company was founded by artificial intelligence experts with more than 1,000 patents to simplify how businesses discover and protect innovative ideas by instantly analyzing internal communications and documents.

“Everyone is an inventor,” IP Copilot CEO Austin Walters said in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat. “Engineers are busier than ever, and our goal is to minimize the friction between ideas and patents and help more innovators become inventors.”

Unlike other AI tools focused on patent drafting, IP Copilot works with relaxation and Yes Identify potentially patentable ideas that arise in daily work conversations.

How Artificial Intelligence Can Enhance the Workflow of Intellectual Property Legal Teams

“At a large company, an IP consultant might be responsible for 10,000 employees. You can’t read every available Slack, all the Jira tickets, and all the changed Confluence pages every day. “Our tool gives patent teams the superpower to actually reads everything available to them and automatically classifies the best candidate patents. “

The company’s approach combines traditional machine learning with large language models, prioritizing accuracy over pure automation. “About 60% is traditional machine learning,” Harrier said. “What do we do with what I think is the best artificial intelligence? it Do it well and then use large language models them Works very well.

To address privacy concerns, the system only monitors public pipes and can be deployed in an enterprise’s own cloud environment. “Everything about us is a first-party system,” Waters emphasized. “We do not send communications to third parties.”

Enterprise IP management faces AI transformation

This financing comes at a critical moment for corporate intellectual property management. As innovation in artificial intelligence accelerates, companies are working to effectively identify and protect intellectual property rights. While most AI startups in the space are focused on automating patent writing, IP Copilot’s emphasis on early discovery could reshape how companies build patent portfolios.

The startup’s roadmap shows broader ambitions. Plans include expansion into trade secrets management and the introduction of a natural language interface for portfolio analysis. These moves could make IP Copilot a comprehensive intellectual property intelligence platform rather than just another legal tech tool.

But perhaps the company’s most notable innovation isn’t technology, but philosophy. In a landscape saturated with artificial intelligence companies promising to replace human expertise, IP Copilot has chosen a different path. “Artificial intelligence won’t replace your job,” Harrier said, “but lawyers using AI might.”

For patent professionals watching the AI ​​revolution unfold, this difference could have significant implications.