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Founder behind £2.5bn exit makes first investment

Published: March 11, 2026 at 2:02 pm

The founder of Preqin has made his first investment following a £2.5 billion exit to BlackRock.

Mark O’Hare founded Valhalla Ventures following the sale last year and it has led a £14 million investment into LegalTech platform Avvoka.

Bootstrapped from launch in 2016, with just £600k raised from angel investors, the investment is the first institutional capital raised by the company behind AI-powered drafting infrastructure for law firms.

Founded by two former Magic Circle lawyers, Eliot Benzecrit and David Howorth, Avvoka has grown by working with large, complex legal organisations, helping them turn precedent and institutional knowledge into drafting systems that can be reused, supervised, and improved over time. 

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