Soxton.AI

Excited to announce that Soxton.AI has acquired Cipher Technologies! We know that founders are trusting us with important and sensitive information. We're committed to using all available technology to keep our platform safe and get your startup legal questions answered as quickly as possible. I first met in Ransford Antwi in December and was so impressed with the security layer for ML agents his team had built. I knew we needed it and we would be lucky to have him join Soxton.AI. Cipher's technology has also allowed us to supercharge our internal growth. We've gotten much faster at fine-tuning specific work flows so we're able to get founders back their contracts/advice faster than ever. It's incredible to work with Ransford. He's brilliant, fun and hard working. He also brings a founder mindset and lived experience of the pain point we're solving (expensive legal) to the team. He moves quickly and is pragmatic about solving problems. It was also fun to manage the acquisition on our own platform. We were able to use our tooling to update and execute the acquisition documents saving us thousands. Read more below. Thank you Ella Sherman for covering! We're always hiring (love founders) and are also happy to help you get your business off the ground. https://lnkd.in/eyDE27mj

When we built Cipher, we started with a simple premise: agentic AI systems need a security layer that moves as fast as they do. Static guardrails weren't going to cut it. Soxton saw the same thing and they're building the infrastructure to prove it. Soxton is reimagining legal services for startups from the ground up, with AI at the core. As the legal industry shifts toward agentic workflows, the need for robust, intelligent security frameworks isn't optional anymore, it's critical. Joining Soxton means Cipher's technology goes from powering standalone systems to sitting at the heart of a platform used by hundreds of startups navigating their most sensitive legal work. We're incredibly excited about what comes next. Excited to work with Logan Brown and the rest of the Soxton.AI team. More to come soon.

Soxton is a AI native law firm that has acquired, as reported in a post at Artificial Lawyer (AL) a security company. Makes a lot of sense to me. From the AL post: “Soxton, an AI-powered, NewMod law firm focused on startups, has acquired Cipher, a security company designed for agentic applications. The move provides ‘advanced protection for autonomous workflows and sensitive startup data’. “The New York-based AI-native law firm, created by former Cooley lawyer Logan Brown, said that by adding in this capability it would enable the NewMod to build multi-agent systems ‘more efficiently and further strengthen its ability to power legal workflows through AI’.” The entire AL post can be read here: https://lnkd.in/ezg9PCE9 #legaltechnology #legaltech Soxton.AI Artificial Lawyer

I incorporated last week for a few hundred dollars. The price isn't the story. We know software is cheap. The story is that my expensive outside counsel 𝘁𝗼𝗹𝗱 me to use it. Five years ago, firms guarded this work as proprietary IP. Now, they're handing it off. Why the flip? 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝘄𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗻-𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲. For decades, lawyers sold access to a private library of "standard" docs. Then YC released the SAFE. Cooley Go published the forms. Stripe Atlas automated the filing. Soxton.AI productized the entire legal backend. Suddenly, "custom" legal work wasn't premium. It was a bug. Investors stopped accepting unique terms. Lawyers realized they were charging $5k for a library that everyone else had for free. If they kept charging for incorporation, they were selling a worse product (manual error risk) than the software. The best lawyers aren't fighting the commoditization. They realized that when the code is open-source, you don't charge for the software. You charge for the 𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗽𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗲 𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁.

Harlan Milkove is an incredible founder and I am so excited for the world to see what he is building. Proud that Soxton.AI gets to play a small role in his journey. We helped Harlan incorporate with founder friendly documents that also set him up for the path ahead. This is what lawyer enabled AI makes possible. A personalized legal foundation at the speed founders move. Cannot wait to see what he builds next.

There's been a lot of great long-form posts from founders and VCs on the timeline. Here are our 3 favorites from this past week: 1. AI’s trillion-dollar opportunity: Context graphs by Jaya Gupta (Foundation Capital) - This is a really great read if you want a clear, practical take on how AI agents actually change enterprise software. It explains why the real opportunity is capturing how decisions get made instead of just storing more data. 2. Jevons Paradox for Knowledge Work by Aaron Levie (Box) - This is a smart, accessible take on why AI efficiency will lead to more work, not less, just like every major tech shift before it. It shows how AI agents unlock new categories of work that were never economically viable before. 3. Responding to negative feedback: are you a CodeRabbit or a Claude? by Lulu Cheng Meservey (ROSTRA) - This was only written a couple hours ago but it's another great example of how to handle public criticism without making it worse. Links to posts in the comments.

Happy holidays from all of us at Soxton.

Speed and quality matter most on day one. Founders shouldn’t have to overspend on legal costs. At Soxton, we help founders handle the early legal foundations of their company at the speed of business, without the traditional legal price tag. Instead of spending weeks navigating legal uncertainty or paying expensive hourly fees, our clients can move forward with confidence. Soxton delivers affordable, high quality legal support built for the earliest stages, so founders can focus on what really matters: shipping, hiring, and growing. Find out more at soxton.ai. Keith Earhart