How we’re investing $50 million in product, customers and people

Summize CEO and Co-founder Tom Dunlop reflects on the next steps for our recent $50 million Series B round, exploring exactly what it means for our product, our customers and our people.

The Contract Lifecycle Management market is hot. It feels like there's a new investment announcement every week, with celebrity endorsements and huge brand campaigns now entering the fold. For us, our recent $50 million investment has been the catalyst for the next phase of growth, focused on tangible outcomes for the people who use, and work at, Summize every day.

We’ve made a deliberate decision to focus on three areas: our product, our customers and our people.

Building a product that legal teams love

At the heart of Summize is a simple idea: contracts should be more than static documents. Contract data should be a source of usable, reliable intelligence that helps legal teams and the wider business make decisions.

So we’ve continued to evolve the core experience and contract operations functionality – from improving everyday usability in areas like Word-based workflows, to expanding what’s possible with AI inside contract review. That focus shows up in features including Ask SIA and custom agents, which are aimed at agentic AI activation, reducing the manual work legal teams still find themselves doing and surfacing knowledge instantly, in the right tool at the right time.

But as we’ve built, we’ve become clearer on the point that not all value from a contract platform sits in the same place or happens in the same way – which is why we think of our software in two connected layers.

The first is the contract operations layer – the foundation of the platform. This is everything needed to manage contracts in a structured, reliable way, from creation and review through to storage and on-going management. It’s about giving legal teams control, consistency and efficiency in their day-to-day work.

On top of that sits the agentic activation layer, powered by Summize Intelligent Agents (SIA). This is where contract data becomes more active and useful across the business – helping teams find answers, surface intelligence and interact with contracts in a more natural way, including within the tools they already use.

Together, the aim is simple: to make contracts easier to manage and more useful to the wider business, because in reality, contract intelligence only matters if it can move with the business, not sit alongside it.

Putting customers closer to the center of how we build

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from working closely with in-house legal teams, it’s that no two teams operate in exactly the same way.

Different industries, different risk profiles, different internal pressures. The nuance matters, and it’s often where software either fits or falls short.

That’s why a key part of this next phase is about getting even closer to our customers.  

We’re not starting from scratch. Our customers already play a big role in shaping the product – whether that’s through beta programs, ongoing ‘Voice of the Customer’ feedback forums with our product team, or regular conversations about how Summize is being used in practice. That input directly influences how we prioritize and build.

What we’re doing now is making that even more structured and visible.

We’re introducing a new customer advisory board and panel, bringing together a group of customers from our key verticals to share how they’re using Summize, where it’s working well and where it isn’t. Not as a one-off exercise, but as an ongoing, structured way to shape how the product evolves.

We hired our first General Counsel who is speaking to customers lawyer-to-lawyer about how they’re using Summize, and its future potential. We’re also investing in how we gather and act on feedback more broadly, making it easier for customers to share input and making sure that input is acted on. To us, the most useful roadmap isn’t the one that looks the most ambitious, but the one that reflects real-world usage.

Investing in the people who make it all work

The drumbeat of Summize is the people, so as we grow, we’re being deliberate about how we support them.

That includes investing in our office spaces so they’re places our team actually want to work from, whether that’s for collaboration, focus or simply a change of scene. We’re a growing business spread across three locations (Manchester, Boston and San Diego), but we want to make sure that everyone feels part of one team and encourage in-person collaboration wherever possible.  

It also means continuing to invest in how our people grow. Alongside training and development pathways, we’re continuing to build on initiatives like our Growth Mindset Fund, which gives our team the flexibility to invest in their own learning – whether that’s formal training, new skills or broader professional development.

We’re also making sure that different parts of the business have a real say in how we evolve as a company. Our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Community and Wellbeing  teams shape our Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) strategy and play an active role here, with their own input and budgets to shape initiatives that matter to them and the wider team.

And finally, but just as importantly, it’s about making sure people feel recognized and valued for the work they do. Growth can put pressure on teams if it isn’t managed carefully, so we’re focused on scaling in a way that protects what already works. It’s a core belief at Summize that culture isn’t just something you write down, but something that people experience every day.

Keeping the focus where it matters

There really is no shortage of ways we could spend this investment. But by focusing on our product, getting closer to our customers and investing in our people, we’re aiming to build something that lasts – not just something that looks good in a LinkedIn announcement.

If we get that right, the hope is that the impact will be felt where it counts: in the day-to-day work of the legal teams we support.