Norm AI's $48M Round for Legal Engineering Automation Platform (LEAP)

Norm AI, a regulatory compliance automation company, recently raised $48 million in a funding round led by Coatue, with participation from Citi Ventures and others, bringing its total funding to $87 million over 18 months‍. The company aims to accelerate development of its Legal Engineering Automation Platform (Leap), which embeds AI agents into business workflows to automate compliance checks for legal documents, corporate communications, and AI-generated content‍. Norm AI also announced the appointment of former SEC Commissioner Troy Paredes as Senior Policy Advisor.

Citigroup made headlines for several developments:

• IT Overhaul: Plans to cut IT contractor reliance from 50% to 20% while hiring 2,000 full-time staff, following a $22.9 million fraud incident involving contractors. This comes amid ongoing regulatory scrutiny, including a $136 million penalty in 2024 for data governance failures.
• Record Error: Accidentally credited a client account with $81 trillion instead of $280 in April 2024 – a "near miss" that regulators were notified about. This follows previous operational errors, including a $900 million mistaken transfer in 2020.
• Strategic Moves: Engaged by Green Dot to explore strategic alternatives amid leadership changes at the digital bank, and launched philanthropy advisory services in Asia through its Private Bank arm to facilitate ultra-high-net-worth donations.

The two companies intersect through Citi Ventures' participation in Norm AI's funding round, highlighting Citi's strategic investments in regulatory tech as it addresses its own compliance challenges.