Qualcomm Backs SpotDraft as Valuation Nearly Doubles to About $380M

As interest in privacy-focused enterprise AI that can operate without transmitting sensitive data to the cloud accelerates, SpotDraft has secured $8 million from Qualcomm Ventures in a strategic extension of its Series B round. The funding is aimed at expanding the startup’s on-device contract review technology for regulated legal workflows.

The Series B extension values SpotDraft at approximately $380 million, the company told TechCrunch — nearly double its $190 million post-money valuation following its $56 million Series B round completed in February last year.

Across highly regulated industries, enterprises have moved quickly to experiment with generative AI, but concerns around privacy, security, and data governance continue to limit adoption for sensitive use cases. This is particularly true in legal work, where contracts often contain privileged material, intellectual property, pricing data, and confidential deal terms. Industry research has repeatedly identified data protection and privacy as significant obstacles to broader GenAI deployment in professional services, driving companies like SpotDraft to pursue architectures that keep contract intelligence on users’ devices rather than routing it through cloud infrastructure.

At Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit 2025, SpotDraft showcased its VerifAI workflow running entirely on Snapdragon X Elite-powered laptops. The demonstration showed contract review and editing happening offline, with documents remaining on the local device. SpotDraft said internet access is still required for login, licensing, and collaboration functions. Still, core capabilities such as contract review, risk analysis, and redlining can operate fully offline without uploading documents to the cloud.

SpotDraft views the legal sector as an early test case for on-device enterprise AI, arguing that many sensitive contracts cannot be processed through external cloud-based models due to privacy, security, and compliance requirements.

“The way enterprise AI is evolving, there has to be intelligence that sits close to the document,” said Shashank Bijapur, co-founder and CEO of SpotDraft, in an interview. “When something is privacy-critical, latency-sensitive, and legally sensitive, those workloads are going to move on device.”

According to SpotDraft, VerifAI’s on-device functionality goes well beyond generating summaries. The tool is designed to apply legal playbooks and recommendations directly within Microsoft Word, fitting seamlessly into existing legal workflows. “VerifAI compares a contract against your internal guidelines, playbooks, and historical policies,” said Madhav Bhagat, co-founder and CTO of SpotDraft.

Bijapur told that demand for on-device AI is most pronounced in tightly regulated industries such as defence and pharmaceuticals, where internal security reviews and data residency requirements can significantly slow or prevent the use of cloud-based AI tools for sensitive documents.

Bhagat added that on-device models have rapidly narrowed the performance gap with cloud-based systems, both in terms of output quality and response times. “In our evaluations, we’re seeing differences of as little as 5% compared to frontier cloud models,” he said, noting that performance on newer chips is now roughly one-third the latency seen in cloud environments.

Since launching in 2017, SpotDraft said it has grown to more than 700 customers, up from around 400 in February of last year. Its customer base includes Apollo.io, Panasonic, Zeplin, and Whatfix. The company said adoption of its contract lifecycle management platform continues to rise, with customers now processing more than 1 million contracts each year. Contract volumes are growing 173% year over year, the platform has nearly 50,000 monthly active users, and SpotDraft expects revenue to grow 100% year over year in 2026. The company reported 169% revenue growth in 2024 and a similar pace in 2025, though it did not disclose specific revenue figures.

SpotDraft plans to use the new funding to strengthen its product and AI capabilities further and to expand its enterprise footprint across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and India. Bijapur said Qualcomm’s involvement goes beyond capital, extending into joint development efforts and go-to-market collaboration for on-device deployments. The on-device workflow is currently available to a limited group of customers, with broader availability expected as AI PC hardware becomes more widely adopted.

“SpotDraft’s ability to securely deploy its proprietary models on-device using Snapdragon platforms marks a significant step forward for a privacy-sensitive industry,” said Quinn Li, senior vice president at Qualcomm Technologies and global head of Qualcomm Ventures.

SpotDraft, which operates out of Bengaluru and New York, said it employs more than 300 people worldwide. The team includes roughly 15 to 20 employees in the U.S., where COO Akshay Verma is based, four to five staff members in the UK, and the remainder of the workforce in Bengaluru.

Including the latest investment from Qualcomm Ventures, SpotDraft has raised $92 million to date. Previous investors include Vertex Growth Singapore, Trident Growth Partners, Xeed VC, Arkam Ventures, and Prosus Ventures.