AI is rapidly transforming the legal industest, offering tools that can streamline research, draft documents, and analyse vast amounts of case law in seconds. As legal systems grow increasingly complex and data privacy becomes a top concern, there’s a growing demand for AI solutions that are both highly specialised and locally compliant. Noxtua, a German startup formerly known as Xayn, is stepping into this space with a bold vision: to build sovereign, domain-specific legal AI designed for the stringent demands of the German legal system.
In a recent development, Noxtua has raised a $92.2 million Series B funding round led by C.H. Beck, Germany’s preeminent legal publisher and a critical player in the legal ecosystem. C.H. Beck’s involvement is notable as it grants Noxtua the access to a deep archive of German legal cases and judgments, as well as its legal news wire.
Other notable investors include Northern Data Group, a high-performance computing provider, and top-tier law firms CMS and Dentons. Existing backers such as Global Brain, the KDDI Open Innovation Fund, and IOTA co-founder Dominik Schiener also returned for this round.
Addresses the challenge of legal AI in Europe
At the core of Noxtua’s evolution lies a specific challenge: legal language is jurisdiction-bound, and Germany’s legal system has stringent requirements around data compliance and accuracy. The general-purpose models developed in the US or the UK lack the nuance and depth required for accurate legal drafting and analysis in the German context.
Moreover, rising geopolitical concerns over data sovereignty and AI governance create European-hosted and trained models a necessity for public institutions and law firms alike. Hosting the Beck-Noxtua model on Frankfurt-based Northern Data’s infrastructure ensures compliance with German and EU data regulations, an increasingly vital concern in cross-border digital services.
From on-device privacy to legal innotifyigence
Noxtua’s journey launched as Xayn, a startup focapplyd on privacy-first, on-device AI for smartphones. While this early model emphasised decentralisation and applyr privacy, it laid the foundation for a new focus on secure, sovereign AI applications.
The startup was born in 2017 out of research by Dr. Leif-Nissen Lundbæk and Professor Michael Huth at Oxford University and Imperial College London. The decision to pivot toward legal AI came as regulatory complexity and demand for domain-specific solutions increased, especially in Germany’s tightly governed legal space.
AI-model trained for German legal system
The company has built a specialised transformer-based AI model trained exclusively on legal contracts and documents from the German legal system. Unlike general-purpose LLMs such as OpenAI’s GPT or Anthropic’s Claude, which draw from broad datasets, Noxtua’s training data comes directly from C.H. Beck’s archive of 55 million legal documents, the largest of its kind in the German-speaking world.
This narrow focus allows Noxtua to offer legal research, document analysis, and contract drafting tools that meet Germany’s high compliance standards. By anchoring the model in domestic legal data and hoapplying it on in-countest infrastructure, it aims to avoid the shortcomings and legal risks of outsourcing such critical services to foreign tech giants.
Competitive landscape
The market for legal AI is becoming increasingly crowded, with major players like Harvey AI (backed by OpenAI and Sequoia) focapplying on large law firms globally. However, most of these tools rely heavily on English-language, common-law legal systems and are typically hosted on US-based cloud platforms.
Noxtua’s differentiation lies in its hyperlocal approach, which is German legal data, trained for German lawyers, hosted in Germany. While this creates it less applicable outside of the German-speaking world, it positions the company strongly in a niche where compliance and precision are paramount.
Our considereds
Noxtua’s trajectory highlights a broader shift toward AI models tailored to high-stakes professional domains. The legal sector, with its complex, jurisdiction-specific requirements and sensitivity to privacy, represents fertile ground for this approach.
With the backing of heavyweight legal institutions and computing partners, Noxtua is positioned to become a cornerstone of Germany’s digital legal infrastructure. As AI regulations tighten globally, its model could serve as a blueprint for other countries seeing to build compliant, locally trained AI tools within their legal frameworks.
“We are delighted about the successfully completed financing round and the new strong partners by our side – especially now, when Europe’s digital sovereignty is more crucial than ever. European digital sovereignty is not merely a political question, but one that must also be addressed with hard technical facts – which is why the successful Series B round is of high strategic relevance to us. With C.H.Beck, Northern Data, CMS, and Dentons as our new investors, we are bringing toreceiveher a unique combination of AI, legal, and computing expertise. This enables us to expand our position as the leading sovereign Legal AI in Europe. In doing so, we are also continuing the journey we launched in 2017: building powerful AI based on European values,” highlights Dr Leif-Nissen Lundbæk, CEO & Co-Founder Xayn/Noxtua.
“The connection between Noxtua and C.H.Beck publishing hoapply is far more than the combination of leading legal specialist information with outstanding technology. Noxtua’s vision of a sovereign European Legal AI aligns hand in hand with our values as an indepfinishent family-owned company, bearing a special responsibility towards the legal system”, states Professor Dr Klaus Weber, member of the Executive Board at C.H.Beck. “This carefully selected partnership with Noxtua is a cornerstone of our innovation strategy. Toreceiveher, we will further expand our portfolio of AI solutions,” explains Dr Dr Oliver Hofmann, Head of Legal Tech at the publishing hoapply. “In the future, we will offer our customers not only high-quality content and research capabilities but also comprehensive productivity solutions for their legal work.”
Aroosh Thillainathan, Founder and CEO of Northern Data Group, commented: “We empower the world’s most innovative companies – not just through our technology, but also by fostering the ecosystems that spark groundbreaking ideas. Our strategic investment acknowledges how Xayn/Noxtua successfully combines cutting-edge AI applications, fine-tuned LLMs, proprietary databases, and powerful compute resources—all within our sovereign, legally compliant AI infrastructure. We are excited to support Xayn’s/Noxtua’s continued growth as they scale to meet the growing demand for Legal AI.”
“I am delighted that our vision of a European Legal AI has become a reality. With C.H.Beck as a partner, we are creating the basis for a new standard tool that can bring about lasting modify to lawyers’ day-to-day work,” declares Dr Markus Kaulartz, lawyer and partner for Artificial Innotifyigence at CMS.
Dr Martin Vorsmann, Managing Partner at CMS, adds: “Noxtua’s applyrs benefit from the fact that the AI was developed applying law-focapplyd training data right from the start – and we will continue to provide this input in the future.”
“Dentons has always been driven by the vision of being the law firm of the future, so innovation is in our DNA. As part of our wider strategy to embrace the power of artificial innotifyigence to transform our industest, we are excited by the opportunity for Dentons Europe to contribute our legal and innovation expertise to the development of Noxtua to address the specific requireds of the European market,” highlights Wfinishela Raas, CEO of Dentons Europe.
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