Meet the next big thing: Fuse announces new digital assets and LegalTech cohort

Shruti Ajitsaria: ‘This year, we had the largest number of applications, both for the LegalTech stream and via client nomination. The potential for the digital assets companies to be transformational is enormous and we are excited to work with them and our nominating clients. The LegalTech companies have been chosen with the assistance of partners across our global network and address pain points that we have identified. We have a great cohort of companies and we all - Fuse, the cohort, A&O lawyers and our clients - have an exciting year ahead.’

The companies nominated by A&O’s clients to join Fuse this year are focussed on digital assets and other uses of distributed ledger technology. They cover a range of product areas and solutions and will give A&O’s lawyers and clients the opportunity to learn from and collaborate with the leading innovators in this sector.

The digital asset companies joining Fuse are:

• Bitbond: Helps financial institutions to create digital assets easily and securely through enterprise-grade tokenisation technology, allowing for an immutable and transferable proof of ownership, and to manage the token lifecycle with distribution and payment automation functionality.
• BondEvalue: Helps investors instantly trade bonds in both full and fractional sizes through their bank or broker via an exchange with transparent prices, enabled by blockchain technology.
• Chainalysis: Helps government agencies, financial institutions and cybersecurity companies to analyse blockchain data through its investigation, compliance, and market intelligence software. Chainalysis builds trust in blockchains to promote more financial freedom with less risk.
• Hunit: Helps lawyers turn conventional, natural language agreements into self-executing smart legal contracts.
• Inveztor: Helps debt capital market participants to streamline the issuance and management of escrows and bonds. The platform connects participants, digitises deal management processes and enhances operations in a real-time, transparent environment.
• Komainu: Helps institutional investors to hold digital assets in a segregated and regulated environment by providing a custodial service solution built on institutional grade technology, which is supported by risk and compliance standards developed alongside a global investment bank.
• Millicent: Helps financial institutions and their clients to issue and instantly settle digital money using shared ledger payments technology.

Fuse will also host a number of LegalTech companies. Working with these companies gives A&O’s lawyers insight into how technology can address the challenges they face every day and helps identify more modern ways of working. The new companies joining Fuse this year are:

• 10BE5: Helps lawyers quickly draft capital markets disclosures and conduct associated due diligence processes by using advanced data analytics, computer vision, and natural language processing techniques, cutting down the time spent on manual and laborious tasks.
• Enigio: Helps companies to create freely transferable digital documents and assets. Enigio’s trace:original is a generic solution that can be used to securely transfer both value and data between any entity and/or organisation without the need for onboarding.
• Pactio: Helps private equity investors, accountants and lawyers to close deals seamlessly and build a single source of truth for investment ownership, structures and cap tables across the investment lifecycle.
• Phosphor: Helps deal teams accelerate the underwriting and closing process for real asset acquisitions and financings. Phosphor combines the financial model, legal documentation, and other key deal data into standardised building blocks on a common, synchronised platform. This enables deal teams and counsel to focus on the unique aspects of a transaction.

Fuse will also continue work with several of its LegalTech alumni:

• Amplified Global: Helps internal legal teams objectively assess and simplify the language used in contracts and other legal documents. It helps create efficiencies in the contract drafting process and allows for standardisation of language and clauses.
• Avvoka: Helps lawyers draft and negotiate any legal document, leveraging structured contract data to create better commercial outcomes by monitoring negotiation patterns and clause variations. The powerful no-code automation editor empowers more users to generate accurate documents at scale.
• Definely: Helps lawyers to more easily access defined terms and references in documents by providing a 360 degree ‘one click’ solution to drafting and reviewing documents.
• DraftWise: Helps lawyers to draft new contracts, quickly find relevant precedents and manage preferred clauses and defined terms, all within Microsoft Word.

John Kwan, Co-Founder of 10BE5 commented: ‘We are privileged to have worked with A&O on a number of high-profile matters. We are excited to build on that relationship as we continue to develop and release a suite of complementary products that will serve A&O and its clients across a spectrum of matters.’

Katee Hunter, CEO of Inveztor commented: ‘Being accepted into Fuse is a significant milestone for Inveztor, and we see this as an opportunity to collaborate with some of the best legal minds in the industry. We believe that being part of this year's Fuse cohort will accelerate our growth and success, and we look forward to leveraging the programme's resources and expertise to achieve our goals.’

Aaron Powers, CEO of Hunit commented: ‘Hunit’s participation in the Fuse programme promises to be hugely impactful in the development of the company and of the smart legal contract sector in general. Fuse is the perfect setting to improve the foundations that Hunit has built through extensive collaboration with leading solicitors and innovation-focused clients.’