Qualcomm backs SpotDraft to scale on-device contract AI with valuation doubling toward $400M

With growing demand for privacy-first enterprise AI that can run without sending sensitive data to the cloud, SpotDraft has raised $8 million from Qualcomm Ventures in a strategic Series B extension to expand on-device contract review technology for regulated legal workflows.

The extension values ​​SpotDraft at about $380 million, nearly double its post-money valuation of $190 million following its $56 million Series B in February of last year, the startup told TechCrunch.

Across regulated sectors, companies have moved quickly to test generative AI, but concerns over privacy, security, and data management continue to slow the adoption of sensitive workflows — especially in the legal space, where contracts can include privileged information, intellectual property, pricing, and deal terms. Industry research has consistently pointed to data security and privacy as major barriers to broader GenAI deployment in professional services, leading vendors like SpotDraft to pursue infrastructures that keep core contract information on a user’s device rather than routing it through the cloud.

At Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit 2025, SpotDraft demonstrated a VerifAI workflow that runs end-to-end on Snapdragon X Elite-powered laptops, performing offline contract review and editing while keeping the document on the local device. An internet connection is still required for login, authorization and collaboration features, but contract review, risk scoring and redlining can be run completely offline without sending documents to the cloud, SpotDraft said.

SpotDraft sees the law as an early proving ground for on-device enterprise AI, arguing that sensitive contracts often cannot be routed through external cloud models due to privacy, security and compliance constraints.

“The future of what enterprise AI will be like – right now, there needs to be AI that is close to the document, which is critical to privacy, sensitive to latency, [and] “It’s legally sensitive, and these are the things that will move on the device,” Shashank Bijapur (pictured above, left), co-founder and CEO of SpotDraft, said in an interview.

SpotDraft says VerifAI’s on-device capability extends beyond simply creating briefs, with the tool designed to apply playbooks and recommendations directly within Microsoft Word, the way legal teams already work. “VerifAI will compare the contract against your guidelines, your playbook, and your previous policies,” said Madhav Bhagat (pictured above, right), co-founder and CTO of SpotDraft.

Bijapur told TechCrunch that demand for on-device AI is most evident in highly regulated sectors, including defense and pharmaceuticals, where internal security reviews and data residency requirements can slow or prevent the use of cloud-based AI tools for sensitive documents.

On-device models quickly closed the gap with cloud-based systems, both in terms of production quality and response times, Bhagat said. “We’ve now gotten to a place, in terms of valuation, where we’re seeing as little as a 5% difference between the leading models, and some of those models have been fine-tuned on hardware models,” he said, adding that speeds on newer chips are now “a third of what we get in the cloud.”

Since launching in 2017, SpotDraft said it has reached more than 700 customers, up from about 400 in February last year, and its users include Apollo.io, Panasonic, Zeplin and Whatfix. Adoption of its contract lifecycle management platform is on the rise, the company said, with customers now processing more than 1 million contracts annually, contract volume growing 173% year-over-year, and nearly 50,000 monthly active users. It also expects revenue to grow 100% year over year in 2026, following 169% growth in 2024 and posting a similar growth rate in 2025, though it did not share specific revenue numbers.

SpotDraft plans to use the new capital to deepen its product and AI capabilities and expand its enterprise presence across the Americas, EMEA region and India, Bijapur said, adding that Qualcomm’s involvement extends beyond financing to joint development and go-to-market efforts for on-device deployments. The startup’s on-device workflow is currently available to a limited group of customers, and the founders expect it to expand more widely as AI-compatible computers become more widely available.

“SpotDraft’s ability to securely deploy its own models on-device using Snapdragon platforms represents a meaningful advance for an industry that is critical to privacy,” said Quinn Li, senior vice president, Qualcomm Technologies, and global head of Qualcomm Ventures.

SpotDraft, based in Bengaluru and New York, said it has a team of over 300 employees, including 15-20 in the US, where COO Akshay Verma is based, and four to five in the UK, with the rest of the workforce in Bengaluru.

To date, the startup has raised $92 million, including the latest investment from Qualcomm Ventures. Its previous investors include Vertex Growth Singapore, Trident Growth Partners, Xeed VC, Arkam Ventures and Prosus Ventures.