## Noxtua Secures $92M to Pioneer Sovereign AI for German Legal Landscape
Noxtua, formerly known as Xayn, has announced a successful $92.2 million (€81.2 million) Series B funding round, signaling a significant leap forward in its mission to deliver sovereign AI solutions tailored for the German legal system. The company, which started as a privacy-focused, on-device AI startup for smartphones back in 2020, pivoted to address the specific needs of the legal sector.
The funding round was spearheaded by C.H. Beck, Germany’s leading legal publisher, a strategic investor with unparalleled access to the country’s vast legal database. This partnership will provide Noxtua with access to C.H. Beck’s extensive archive of legal cases, judgments, and news, fueling the development of their flagship legal AI product, Beck-Noxtua.
Joining C.H. Beck as new investors are Northern Data Group, a specialist in high-performance computing, CMS, Germany’s largest business law firm, and global law firm Dentons. Existing investors like Global Brain, KDDI Open Innovation Fund, and Dominik Schiener also participated in the round.
The involvement of Northern Data Group is particularly noteworthy. Beck-Noxtua will be deployed as a sovereign AI solution on Northern Data’s cloud infrastructure, ensuring that all data and processing remain within Germany. This addresses growing concerns about data sovereignty and security, especially when handling sensitive legal information.
Noxtua asserts that its AI is uniquely positioned to research legal matters, analyze complex documents, and even draft legal content, all while adhering to Germany’s stringent legal compliance standards. The company emphasizes the critical role of C.H. Beck’s extensive training data, comprising 55 million documents – the largest legal database in the German-speaking world – in ensuring the accuracy and reliability of its AI.
In a landscape increasingly shaped by geopolitical considerations, Noxtua’s decision to partner with Frankfurt-based Northern Data reinforces its commitment to keeping German legal AI infrastructure within German borders. This move reflects a growing trend towards “sovereign AI,” where nations seek to control and secure their AI infrastructure and data.
Dr. Leif-Nissen Lundbæk, CEO and Co-Founder of Noxtua, explained to TechCrunch that the company utilizes its own custom transformer AI model, meticulously trained on legal contracts. “We’ve already rolled it out to a lot of law firms and legal departments and partnered with C.H. Beck,” he stated, drawing a parallel to “Thompson Reuters for law” in Germany.
Lundbæk further highlighted the limitations of U.S.-based foundational models for the German legal context, noting that they are often trained on American and UK data, which differ significantly from German legal frameworks. “Those models really fail in precision,” he added. “Plus, government services are essentially legal, right? So you cannot just use an American AI model in a German legal context.”
Noxtua’s technology stems from research initiated by its founders at the University of Oxford and Imperial College London, further refined in collaboration with CMS.
Professor Dr. Klaus Weber, a member of the executive board at C.H. Beck, emphasized the alignment of values between the two companies: “Noxtua’s vision of a sovereign European legal AI aligns hand in hand with our values … Noxtua is a cornerstone of our innovation strategy.” The substantial Series B funding underscores the growing demand for specialized AI solutions that respect national legal frameworks and prioritize data sovereignty. Noxtua is now poised to become a key player in the evolution of legal technology in Germany and potentially beyond.