AI-powered contract management platform Malbek lands $15.3M

Contract lifecycle management startup Malbek today announced it has raised $15.3 million in a series A funding round led by Noro-Moseley Partners, with participation from TDF Ventures and Osage Venture Partners. The funding, which brings the company’s total raised to over $20 million, will be used to support product development and expansion, according to CEO Hemanth Puttaswamy.

The market for contract management systems — which was worth $1.5 billion in 2019 — continues to grow as companies realize their value. Goldman Sachs estimates companies that don’t adopt these systems risk spending almost 5% of their revenue tracking agreements after signing a contract. Indeed, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, enterprises stand to save 2% of their annual costs by implementing automated contract management systems to improve accuracy and compliance.

Somerset, New Jersey-based Malbek was founded in 2017 by Brian Madocks, Puttaswamy, Madhusudan Poolu, and Matt Patel. The company employs AI to automate contract workflows across sales, finance, procurement, and other business units. The platform provides connectors for software from Salesforce, Workday, Slack, Microsoft, and others, allowing contract data to flow between first- and third-party systems.

“This investment unlocks our next stage as a company and enables us to empower more business users to get deeper, more actionable contract data insights that will ultimately save organizations valuable time, reduce risk, and accelerate topline revenue,” Puttaswamy said in a press release. “Malbek is the proven, next-generation contract lifecycle management made for everyone. Our modern solution is trusted by Fortune 500 customers and other large enterprise teams, as well as many small to mid-sized high-growth organizations, to unite [different] teams to take the hassle out of the entire contract process, from pre- to post-signature and every step in between.”

Managing contracts

Malbek offers a number of products to help businesses avoid contract management pitfalls, which can erode an average of 9.2% of revenue annually, Puttaswamy says. For example, Malbek’s Konnect Integration Marketplace allows customers to integrate Malbek with business apps using no-code, drag-and-drop software integrations. As for Lifecycle AI, it provides recommendations for contract authoring, review, negotiation, approval, and milestone management.

“At Momentive, we use Malbek’s contract lifecycle management processes to increase efficiencies … [and free] up resources to focus on more strategic business initiatives,” Momentive (formerly SurveyMonkey) legal operations head Ewa Hugh said in a statement.

While Momentive competes with startups like Lexicon, LinkSquares, Evisort, Contractbook, and Concord, it has managed to increase sales nearly 500% year-over-year with brands including Tibco Software, EDF Renewables, Pantheon, and Rothman Orthopaedic Institute.

“Malbek leads the way in the customer lifecycle management space, as evidenced by the company’s sales win rate versus alternative solutions,” Noro-Moseley Partners’ John Ale said in press release. “Malbek modernizes real-world contract management at scale while providing more insights into contract data that could be easily missed during review.”