UK-based start-up Orbital Witness has closed a £3.3m seed funding round.
Launched in 2017, the firm offers a legal due diligence platform to access and organise property information from HM Land Registry and local authorities, facilitate document review and flag risks automatically to lawyers and underwriters.
The investment round brings Orbital Witness’s total funding to £4.5m.
The latest investment will be used to create a universal risk rating for property and land, similar to a credit check, to provide a high-level view of property risk.
Using machine learning technology and reinforcement learning techniques, the firm said it has developed an understanding of real estate and property risk that it is now applying across commercial real estate properties in the UK.
The firm employs fifteen people based in London, and said it aims to double the team in the next year across product, technology, data science, customer success and marketing to continue its growth and establish new product categories.
Among its customers are in-house legal teams from M&S and TfL, and title insurance companies.
The latest funding was led by LocalGlobe and Outward VC with participation from previous investors, including Seedcamp and JLL Spark.
Will Pearce, Co-founder and COO at Orbital Witness, said: “We’ve built a system for clients to access documents from numerous important sources and provide an easy way to provide risk assessment and insights quickly. Now, we’re using that expertise and technology to reimagine property and land risk for today, to make transacting real estate less time-consuming, arduous and inefficient.”
Edmond Boulle, Co-founder and CEO at Orbital Witness, added: “Orbital Witness imagines a world where real estate and property issues are no longer hidden behind mounds of deeds and documents.
“Our goal is to simplify the complexities of the current process and bring greater transparency to the world’s largest asset class. With this new funding, we’re able to accelerate towards our vision of a universal risk rating, similar to a credit check, that provides an early warning system for property professionals.”