US mass action legaltech start-up Chariot Claims has secured $10m in a Series A funding round, amid a rise in mass action and arbitration activity in the US.
The investment was led by early-stage investor Silverton Partners. Other participants included Indicator Ventures, Lightbank, Indian AI start-up investor Neon Fund, ZVC, Rosecliff Venture Partners, Alumni Ventures, FJ Labs, Graph Ventures and Vermilion Ventures. They were joined by unnamed angel investors.
Chariot Claims is an AI platform that helps consumers claim against major companies that may have violated their rights, representing clients by pursuing mass actions and mass arbitrations, which coordinates thousands of individual claims rather than combining those claimants into a single class action suit.
Zim Hang, founder and CEO of Chariot Claims, said: “We raised this round to take on the Goliath mega corps.
“They’re already using bullying tactics and financial leverage to threaten us and quiet the legal process. This capital lets us accelerate our tech to even the playing field, as well as invest in consumer privacy rights, education and protective legislation.”
Mike Dodd, general partner at Silverton Partners commented that the financing will help consumers “seek justice” when a company breaks any laws or promises that it has made.
He added: “Chariot has built the technology to make individual consumer claims work at scale, and the team to operate it in a category where execution is genuinely hard.”
Chariot helps consumers who seek compensation through a network of partner law firms, and says that it processes 200,000 pre-qualified claims per month, principally in cases that involve Fortune 500 companies.
The company also says that its consumer clients have received an estimated average of $460 in successful compensation claim outcomes, significantly higher than the average $32 in redress payments the US federal agency Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found in its analysis of class action settlements.
In July last year, the company raised $3.6m in a seed financing led by investment firm Indicator Ventures.
The New York-based legaltech start-up was founded three years ago by CEO Hang, under its original name of ClaimCalm before being rebranded last year.
Prior to establishing the company, he also co-founded venture capital firm Cryspr Consulting a decade ago, which has focused on funding early-stage start-ups.
Earlier this year, at a roundtable event hosted by GLP and Ashurst Perkins Coie, Ashurst Perkins Coie partner and global antitrust co-head Shylah Alfonso said that in the US, mass arbitration is the “claimant bar’s creative response” to class-action waivers and compulsory arbitration clauses.
In other recent funding rounds, last week Danish AI legal research start-up Pandektes secured €13.5m in a Series A round led by early-stage venture capital fund Alstin Capital, alongside contributions from investment firms PROfounders and Scale Capital and existing investors People Ventures and Interface Capital.
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