Docusign doubles down on IAM with $165M acquisition of Lexion

Docusign has announced the acquisition of Lexion, an AI-powered agreement management software provider, in an all-cash deal valued at $165 million. The purchase is intended to shore up Docusign’s position in the Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM) space, an area the company entered last month. But Lexion isn’t going away — at least not yet. Docusign says Lexion’s products will continue to be available and even improved for the hundreds of enterprise customers already using the software.

Founded in 2019 by Gaurav Oberoi, Emad Elwany and James Baird out of the Allen Institute for AI (AI2), Seattle-based Lexion offers a natural language processing system that turns contract text into structured data. It’s then delivered into a repository with search, reporting, alerts, permissions and integrations. The startup competes with Cortical, Pactum, LinkSquares, Evisort, Contractbook and Agiloft. Oberoi, Elwany and Baird will join Docusign in senior product and engineering roles.

“We share a vision of smarter agreement management, and our joint AI-powered innovation will deliver increased value, productivity and simplicity to our combined customers,” Docusign Chief Executive Allan Thygesen said in a statement. “This strategic acquisition underscores our commitment to providing our customers with [IAM] solutions that will transform agreement data into insights, accelerate contract reviews and boost productivity to ultimately grow revenue faster.”

Docusign is already touting some of the newest capabilities its IAM platform will support when Lexion’s technology is integrated. These include providing customers with richer insights into their agreements and offering an AI-powered plugin for Microsoft Word to assist in contract development, as well as making it easier to find information in agreements through a Q&A experience and manage document intakes by email, Microsoft Teams or Slack.

“Our shared vision with Docusign revolves around revolutionizing how agreements are created, managed and analyzed for organizations around the world,” Oberoi remarked. “We will drive innovation, deliver greater value to both Docusign and Lexion customers, along with a broader organization that has a deep understanding of the agreement management space.”

Lexion has raised more than $35.2 million in venture funding from Madrona Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Citi Ventures, Point72 Ventures and the law firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.