The patent process can take up to 24 months, as fragmented tools such as Word documents, spreadsheets, and emails create administrative chaos for professionals.
Ankar unifies the entire lifecycle from novelty checks across 150+ million patents to drafting and prosecution, delivering 40% productivity gains and shifting hundreds of hours to strategy for clients like L’Oréal and Vorys.
Today, the startup closed a $20 million Series A led by Atomico, with Index Ventures, Norrsken VC, and Daphni joining, bringing total funding to $24 million to double its 20-person team and expand to the US market.
Reimagining IP as a growth engine
Tamar Gomez and Wiem Gharbi, with roots in Palantir’s high-stakes engineering, founded Ankar in 2024 after witnessing patent bottlenecks firsthand and being frustrated by a decades-old process.
Ankar’s platform deploys AI as a strategic assistant, not autopilot, with claim-level reasoning, instant prior-art scans over 250+ million publications, LLM governance, and enterprise-grade security for confidential workflows.
Wiem Gharbi, co-founder of Ankar AI, said: “Patents sit at the intersection of deep technical knowledge and precise legal reasoning, and AI can finally unlock real leverage in that process. Ankar gives professionals the analytical depth they’ve never had before, enabling stronger strategy and better protection. Atomico shares our ambition to build the infrastructure behind the next generation of global innovation.”
Other features include end-to-end orchestration from invention disclosure to examiner responses, 60% faster drafting, and strategic guidance on portfolio gaps, all of which outperform narrow tools.
Unlike DeepIP‘s Word-plugin drafter, Patlytics’ analytics focus, or Patsnap’s search-heavy approach, Ankar spans the entire cycle holistically, avoiding fragmentation.
What’s next?
Ankar plans to double headcount, accelerate engineering, product, and go-to-market teams, and expand into US R&D hubs in automotive and electronics, where IP wars intensify. In the long term, it aims to dominate as the invisible OS for global innovation, evolving its features for infringement prediction and ecosystem mapping to cement patents as C-suite revenue shields.
Tamar Gomez, co-founder of Ankar AI, said: “Invention is how we solve humanity’s biggest challenges, yet the systems that protect those ideas are decades out of date. AI will redefine how global organisations innovate over the next five years, turning IP from a cost centre into a growth driver. The companies that adopt Ankar now will shape the future of innovation.”
Andreas Helbig, partner at Atomico, concluded: “Tamar and Wiem bring exceptional technical depth and first-hand experience of how broken the patent process is. Their momentum with Fortune 500 companies shows they’re building the right product at exactly the right moment. We’re proud to support their mission as they build the foundational infrastructure for how the world’s most important ideas are protected and commercialised.”
