JUPUS Raises 13 Million Euros in Series A

LegalTech startup accelerates the AI transformation of small and mid-sized law firms

• Semapa Next leads the round, NRW.BANK joins as co-investor
• ARR quadrupled in 2025
• More than 2,000 lawyers use JUPUS across Germany already
• European expansion planned

The legal-tech startup JUPUS (Cologne) has raised 13 million euros in a Series A funding round. The company has built Europe’s first AI secretarial service designed specifically for law firms, and its growth reflects the demand. In 2025, JUPUS quadrupled its annual recurring revenue (ARR), tripled its headcount, and more than doubled both its user base and the number of cases it processes. Semapa Next leads the round, with NRW.BANK joining as co-investor through its venture capital fund, NRW.Venture. Existing backers Acton Capital and High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) reinvesting. The capital will fund the next stage of JUPUS’s legal AI, drive scale in the German market, and support a European expansion.

An “AI colleague” for the law firm

Europe’s law firms face a gap that no job posting can close. Over the past 30 years, the number of newly trained legal assistants has fallen by more than 70 percent, even as the number of practising lawyers has tripled and the administrative workload has continued to climb. The pressure falls hardest on small and mid-sized firms, which make up 90 percent of the European market and are increasingly running up against their capacity limits. These are precisely the firms JUPUS was built for.

JUPUS represents a new generation of tools for the legal profession, AI that does not merely assist but does the work itself. It answers client calls, structures inquiries, prepares cases, and drafts legal documents, saving firms more than 70 hours every month. In doing so, it changes how lawyers spend their time, shifting it away from administration and back toward clients and substantive legal work. More than 2,000 new cases pass through the JUPUS AI each day, more than at any single law firm in Europe, and over 2,000 lawyers already rely on the solution.

Investors see JUPUS as a European pioneer

In Semapa Next, JUPUS gains a well-capitalised, pan-European investor with a track record of helping companies scale across Europe beyond their home market. “Other LegalTech solutions assist, while JUPUS works. That is the decisive difference,” says Hugo Augusto, CEO of Semapa Next. “Legal operations in Europe have a bottleneck problem, and most firms are still working around it. What convinced us was the depth of the integration, the usage data, and a team that has already proven it can scale. We back companies that want to be category leaders and we believe JUPUS will be this category winner.”

Johanna Antonie Tjaden-Schulte, member of the Executive Board of NRW.BANK: “Artificial intelligence can ease the workload on skilled staff and make processes more efficient. JUPUS demonstrates how innovative technology can solve concrete challenges within an industry. Through our investment, we are backing the growth of a young company from North Rhine-Westphalia that develops digital solutions for the legal market.”

For lawyer and JUPUS co-founder René Fergen, the mission is broad access to the German legal system. “Law is one of the oldest industries in the world, and it is facing its greatest transformation,” he says. “Over the past 30 years, the number of lawyers has tripled while the number of newly trained legal assistants has dropped by more than 70 percent. Firms now face an existential question: who will do the work that soon no one will be left to do? With JUPUS, we are building the first AI that handles these tasks on its own, and with it a new understanding of how a law firm works, designed for the hundreds of thousands of small and mid-sized firms that form the foundation of the rule of law in Europe. We are proud to have partners who share that ambition in Semapa Next, NRW.BANK, Acton Capital, HTGF, and our business angels.”

Market validation from the legal initiatives of major AI providers

JUPUS reads the recent wave of legal products from global AI providers as confirmation of its thesis. “AI in the law firm is moving from experiment to standard,” says René Fergen. “The difference lies in the depth of integration. Generic language models hand firms a set of tools. JUPUS is built specifically for legal work and takes over entire processes, drawing on the knowledge of millions of real cases. For small and mid-sized firms in Germany and across Europe, which operate under professional conduct rules, GDPR, and attorney-client privilege, that distinction is essential.”

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About JUPUS
JUPUS is the technology leader in AI software for law firms. The Cologne-based LegalTech startup has developed the first AI secretarial service for the legal industry in Europe: a legally trained artificial intelligence that delivers fully automated, GDPR-compliant communication and case handling. It manages the entire workflow, from the initial client inquiry through appointment booking to file creation, including complete legal documents, saving firms up to 70 working hours per month. Amid the shortage of trained legal assistants, demand for the AI secretarial service is rising exponentially, and more than 2,000 lawyers already use the solution. JUPUS was founded in 2022 by law graduate René Fergen (CEO) and Jannis Gebauer (CTO). The company is growing fast: revenue quadrupled in 2025 compared with 2024, and it now employs 70 people. With this round of funding, a total of over 20 million euros has been invested in the start-up. Semapa Next, NRW.BANK, Acton Capital, High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) and Combination VC, alongside prominent business angels including Kilian Kaminski (Refurbed), Artjem Weissbeck (Kapten & Son, charles), Julius Göllner, Feliks Eyser, and Felix Plog (Foodpanda, Thermondo).

About Semapa Next
Semapa Next is a pan-European venture capital firm investing at Series A in companies with the ambition to become global category leaders. The investment focus spans four investment themes: Industrial Tech, Supply Chain and Logistics, Energy Transition, and Vertical Software such as Legal Tech. Semapa Next team brings together investors, operators and founders who understand what it takes to build category leader companies.

About NRW.Venture
NRW.Venture is the venture capital fund of NRW.BANK. Through it, the development bank for North Rhine-Westphalia addresses the scarcity of financing available to young, innovative and often technology-oriented companies that frequently cannot finance themselves through loans. Their main asset lies in a new market idea, which makes their chances of success difficult to assess. NRW.Venture invests in such start-ups, typically from the second financing round onwards, providing up to €15 million in equity capital across several rounds, alongside private-sector investors. In doing so, NRW.BANK takes minority stakes over a term of three to seven years. The commitment involves more than capital alone, however. An experienced team is the key to shared success. The investment professionals at NRW.Venture combine many years of venture capital experience with deep technology and start-up know-how, drawing on their expertise and network to give start-ups the best possible chance of success.