AI Patent Startup Stilta Secures $10.5 Million in Seed Funding

AI patent startup Stilta has announced the completion of a $10.5 million seed funding round, led by Andreessen Horowitz. According to ChainCatcher, the round also saw participation from Y Combinator and individual investors from companies such as OpenAI, Legora, Sana, Lovable, and Listen Labs. The newly acquired funds will primarily be used to hire engineers, patent experts, and a marketing team. Stilta plans to expand its team to approximately 10 members within the next three to six months and aims to establish an office in New York by the end of this year or early 2027. Stilta specializes in AI Agent-driven patent management software, focusing on scenarios such as patent infringement identification, patent licensing opportunity discovery, and patent litigation defense. The platform analyzes billions of patents, research papers, and historical web data to assist enterprises and law firms in managing patent assets. Founded this year by former McKinsey members Oskar Block, Petrus Werner, Tobias Estreen, and Oscar Adamsson, Stilta was selected for Y Combinator's 2026 winter incubation program. Currently, about two-thirds of its clients are enterprises, with the remainder being law firms. Stilta is developing hundreds of AI Agents for tasks such as infringement analysis and patent invalidation analysis, with customizations for specialized fields like pharmaceuticals. In recent years, Andreessen Horowitz and Y Combinator have increased their investments in the legal tech sector, with a16z previously investing in AI legal assistant Harvey and YC recently backing legal AI companies like Legora, PointOne, and Parlai.