Co-founders Wiem Gharbi and Tamar Gomez bring experience from Palantir and defencetech, respectively, and identified deep inefficiencies in current IP tooling and workflows.

The platform analyzes over 150 million patent applications and 250 million scientific publications to surface prior art, guide claim strategy, and deliver high-quality, draft applications.

The long-term goal is for Ankar to become the foundational software layer that orchestrates how ideas become defensible patents globally in the AI era.

Funding will support doubling the team and expanding engineering, product, design, and go-to-market efforts in Europe and the United States, with existing clients like L’Oréal and Vorys.

Ankar, a London-based AI-driven patent platform, has raised $20 million in a Series A led by Atomico, with additional encouragement from Index Ventures, bringing total funding to $24 million.

Positioning itself as an operating system for patents, Ankar offers a unified workflow that covers novelty assessment, drafting, and prosecution to accelerate patent work from weeks to hours.

Notable endorsements include L’Oréal’s praise for Ankar’s adaptable, customer-centric approach to patent needs.

The platform unifies the entire patent lifecycle—novelty checks, prior-art analysis, drafting, and examiner interactions—aiming to turn IP into a growth driver rather than a cost center.

The product shift emphasizes generating a high-quality scope of protection and effective claim development, not just text generation.

Early customers include L’Oréal and the law firm Vorys, with users reporting about a 40% productivity boost and hundreds of hours redirected to high-value work.

In a context where intangible assets can account for up to 90% of S&P 500 company value, AI-driven IP tooling is increasingly essential to protect innovation.

Ankar consolidates history and analysis in a single view to streamline responses to patent examiners, aiming for faster, stronger, and more defensible outcomes.