If you missed the news, Reveal took a $200M round of funding from K1 Capital and promptly acquired Brainspace. I was lucky enough to get an early briefing on this while brainstorming with the Reveal team on using their platform to analyze the Parler data to support the FBI investigations. In the last year Reveal acquired Mindseye (triage/ECA), LexLP (AI/ML) and even picked up George Socha as their spokesperson. The latter reminded me of how kCura(Relativity) raised $125M from Iconiq in Feb 2015 and recruited David Horrigan from 451 Research that November. Six years later Relativity is the undisputed market leading review platform for large scale, high stakes matters. So right as I see Relativity pivot upstream for the corporate, security and IG markets, Reveal seems to be trying to build the end-to-end AI driven eDiscovery solution. I do not see them as a Relativity competitor yet. The new Reveal product suite has deep investments in Relativity integrations and channel partners. Too deep to take a competitive stance ahead of their internal integration challenges.
So what does this mean to consumers and service providers? Ever since Relativity acquired Content Analyst, I have had to listen to providers kvetch about the lack of analytic/hosting platform options. I have watched mid-tier/cloud players like Nuix, Ipro, Catalyst, ICONECT, Everlaw, etc. scramble to build competitive solutions and chip away at Relativity’s market share. Reveal is the first provider to take an AI/ML first approach to the market. NexLP and Brainspace have a good history of playing well with Relativity and other review platforms. Zach Warren’s piece makes it clear that this is a conscious strategy by Wendell Jisa based on this quote:
“I truly believe that these two acquisitions and what we’ve done in such a short period of time make Reveal the clear incumbent to Relativity,” Jisa said. “I say that with a lot of humility because Relativity is a great product, but I think that what we’re trying to do by utilizing AI in order to catapult this generation of users is something that this industry hasn’t seen before.”
I am a firm believer that competition and solutions are good for the eDiscovery market. RFP engagements are boring when clients start by asking, “So is there any reason we should not go with Relativity?” I look forward to seeing how Reveal handles the feature overlap, channel partners and consumption models for the combined solution.
Greg Buckles wants your feedback, questions or project inquiries at Greg@eDJGroupInc.com. Contact him directly for a free 15 minute ‘Good Karma’ call. He solves problems and creates eDiscovery solutions for enterprise and law firm clients.
Greg’s blog perspectives are personal opinions and should not be interpreted as a professional judgment or advice. Greg is no longer a journalist and all perspectives are based on best public information. Blog content is neither approved nor reviewed by any providers prior to being posted. Do you want to share your own perspective? Greg is looking for practical, professional informative perspectives free of marketing fluff, hidden agendas or personal/product bias. Outside blogs will clearly indicate the author, company and any relevant affiliations.
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