Invention drives humanity’s progress, delivering life-saving medicines, revolutionary transportation systems, and transformative energy solutions. Yet, identifying inventive opportunities, securing intellectual property, and enforcing patents remains outdated. Ankar is changing that with its breakthrough platform that harnesses artificial intelligence across the entire invention lifecycle.
Today, Ankar, a platform leveraging AI agents to transform how innovators and companies worldwide capture, protect and monetise their intellectual property (IP), has raised a £3M seed round led by Index Ventures. They were joined by Daphni, Motier Ventures, Booom and Puzzle Ventures, and leading angels including Datadog CEO, Olivier Pomel and Hugging Face CTO, Julien Chaumond.
Speaking to TFN, Ankar co-founder Tamar Gomez shared: “We will be focusing on scaling our team of AI, engineering, and IP experts to ensure our product continues to get stronger and faster and drive increased customer benefits. We will also double down on our global customer acquisition, working closely with enterprises to understand their challenges, identify opportunities, and refine our solutions to ensure they drive maximum value.”
Behind Ankar: becoming the “operating system of innovation”
Founded in 2024 by Palantir alumni Tamar Gomez and Wiem Gharbi, Ankar aims to become the “operating system of innovation” — catalysing a new era for global research and development. Ankar’s AI agents help inventors, R&D, and IP teams accelerate and enhance the innovation process. The team believes their technology will unlock a new global research and development era.
Both founders bring deep expertise: Tamar Gomez holds a doctorate in economics from Imperial College London and previously served as a product manager at Helsing, a leading AI and defence tech company. Wiem Gharbi, a graduate of Telecom Paris, spent six years at Palantir focusing on strategy and product development. Their combined experience in AI, product, and complex enterprise environments uniquely positions them to tackle the challenges of modern IP management.
Gomez and Gharbi, both seasoned leaders in the high-tech space and inventors themselves, experienced firsthand the challenges of the patent process at Palantir. Their frustrations with lengthy stakeholder calls, language barriers, and countless hours drafting invention memos inspired them to create a seamless, AI-powered solution that removes barriers holding back R&D efforts.
Gomez told TFN: “The inspiration was the shared experience at Palantir (as well as my time at Helsing) of navigating the lengthy process of trying to secure patents and protect IP. We realised that our experience wasn’t unique and that there is a major market need for this solution. As the wider adoption of AI drives a homogenisation of operations across different corporate entities, and with up to 90% of assets now intangible, protecting and monetising company IP is becoming essential. Ankar has been designed to meet that need.”
Within just one year of founding, Ankar has deployed its technology to leading Fortune 500 innovators, including enterprises and global brands across the automotive, aeronautics, pharmaceutical, and software industries. This includes global automotive supplier Valeo. The company’s rapid traction has been further validated by its inclusion in industry watchlists and coverage by leading tech publications.
Transforming how innovators across the world capture, protect and monetise their IP
The platform improves how organisations discover, protect, and commercialise new intellectual property (IP). It is powered by what the Ankar team believes is the most advanced IP software AI ever brought to market.
“Recent developments in artificial intelligence signal a seismic shift in how humanity invents,” said Tamar Gomez, co-founder of Ankar. “As AI becomes more deeply integrated with the invention process, we’re about to witness an explosion in the discovery rate. Ankar is positioning itself at the centre of this transformation by building the innovation operating system.”
Ankar’s platform is underpinned by state-of-the-art artificial intelligence, trained on scientific and legal data to understand the global invention landscape. This accelerates each stage of the invention process: first, by identifying patent gaps and assessing an invention’s originality; then, by drafting patent submissions with enhanced uniqueness and defensibility; and finally, by detecting infringements at scale while identifying new licensing opportunities.
This significantly reduces IP costs and unlocks new revenue streams through IP monetisation and commercialisation of discoveries. As AI drives increasing standardisation across corporate operations, and with up to 90% of assets now intangible, protecting and monetising company IP has become essential.
Speaking about competition, Gazar added, “There are incumbent platforms that are not AI native and hence are struggling to innovate with truly game-changing products. Other AI actors are focused on point solutions that do not cater to the R&D lifecycle as a whole and hence miss key value.”
Key competitors in the traditional IP management include Anaqua, Clarivate, and WebTMS, but these incumbents often lack advanced AI integration. Meanwhile, newer entrants like iPNOTE and PatentPool focus on specific workflow segments rather than offering a unified, AI-driven solution across the entire innovation lifecycle. This positions Ankar as a comprehensive, next-generation platform.
“Our platform dramatically streamlines this process and mountains of documents, which slow down research today”, said Wiem Gharbi, co-founder of Ankar AI. “But improving efficiency is only the beginning – building AI into the invention process, along with the inventors, allows inventors to fundamentally expand the horizons of what we can imagine creating. We believe Ankar is creating the foundation for the next generation of breakthrough technologies.”
Murielle Khairallah, Valeo’s Intellectual Property Vice President, comments: “Innovation and IP protection are at the heart of Valeo’s strategy. Our codevelopment with Ankar and the use of their generative AI solutions strengthen our capacity to protect our innovations and optimise our patent filing process. This modern approach is fully aligned with our operational excellence and position as a technological leader in the automotive industry.”
Hannah Seal, Partner at Index Ventures, said: “Tamar and Wiem are redefining how innovation is captured, protected, and commercialised — turning IP from a defensive legal asset into a strategic growth lever. As innovation and R&D lie at the heart of economic growth and progress more broadly, we’re excited to back Ankar on their mission to empower more teams to turn bold ideas into lasting outcomes.”
