Ankar Raises $20M for Patent Intelligence

In December 2025, the London-based AI platform Ankar raised $20 million in a Series A funding round. The investment was led by Atomico, with participation from Index Ventures, Norrsken VC, and Daphni.

The company is founded by Tamar Gomez and Wiem Gharbi, both alumni of data giant Palantir. Ankar is building the “Operating System for Innovation” to modernize the antiquated patent lifecycle.

Currently, securing a patent can take up to 24 months, relying on fragmented workflows involving scattered Word documents, spreadsheets, and slow manual searches. Ankar unifies this process by using AI to handle the heavy lifting across the entire chain—from assessing the novelty of an idea against 150 million existing patents to drafting defensible claims and managing prosecution responses. Unlike simple drafting tools, Ankar integrates deeply into the R&D workflow, acting as a strategic partner that helps companies capture more innovation and protect it faster.

The new capital will be used to expand its engineering team in London and scale its US presence, aggressively targeting enterprises that view IP as a core asset class.

Market Signal

• The “Palantir” Pedigree: The founders’ background at Palantir is a massive signal for Enterprise Trust. In the IP space, “Data Privacy” is the number one blocker (companies are terrified of leaking trade secrets to an AI). Ankar’s “Security-Native” architecture, inherited from the defense-tech mindset, is their winning moat against generic OpenAI wrappers.
• From “Legal Tech” to “R&D Ops”: This round validates a shift in buyer personas. While traditional patent software is sold to General Counsels (Cost Centers), Ankar is positioning itself as a tool for R&D Heads (Value Centers). It moves IP protection upstream, turning it from a “filing task” into an “innovation mining” strategy.
• Consolidating the Stack: The market is currently flooded with niche “AI Drafters” (just writing). Ankar’s $20M Series A suggests that VCs are betting on the “End-to-End Platform” winner—one that handles search, drafting, and prosecution—effectively becoming the Salesforce for Intellectual Property.

Key Details

• Company: Ankar
• Funding: $20M Series A
• Headquarters: London, UK
• Lead Investor: Atomico
• Founders: Tamar Gomez (CEO), Wiem Gharbi (ex-Palantir)
• Use Case: AI-powered patent intelligence and end-to-end IP lifecycle management