Ankar AI is Transforming How Breakthrough Ideas Become Protected Innovation

Ankar AI, empowering patent teams with AI tools to innovate more efficiently, thoroughly, and productively, led by Wiem Gharbi and Tamar Gomez, has secured a $20 million Series A round led by Atomico, with Index Ventures doubling down and Norrsken VC and Daphni participating, bringing the total funding to $24 million. The company will use the funding to grow its team and expand further into the US.

AI is transforming how inventions become protected assets, but fragmented tools and slow adoption have limited its impact. Ankar changes this by unifying the entire patent lifecycle into a single, secure operating system.

By bringing novelty analysis, drafting, and prosecution into one workflow, Ankar lets teams do in hours what once took weeks, delivering stronger claims, clearer framing, and more defensible global IP portfolios.

Patents are slow and fragmented, relying on outdated tools that delay filings and weaken outcomes. Ankar replaces this with a single platform covering the full patent lifecycle, from instant novelty and prior-art analysis across hundreds of millions of patents and papers, to high-quality draft applications and streamlined examiner responses, helping teams secure stronger IP faster as competition intensifies.

Ankar is built for the highest-confidentiality patent workflows, shaped by its Palantir-trained founders’ experience in secure, mission-critical systems. As generative AI makes it easier to replicate innovations, enterprises are prioritizing deeper, more defensible IP, especially in R&D-heavy industries.

Ankar helps teams move from idea to granted patent far faster, delivering ~40% productivity gains, shifting hundreds of hours to high-value work, and earning strong adoption, with 96% of users recommending the platform.

Ankar’s Series A brings total funding to $24M, enabling the company to double its 20-person team, expand engineering, product, and design, and scale go-to-market operations across Europe and the U.S. The long-term goal is to become the software layer that turns ideas into defensible patents globally, becoming core infrastructure for innovation in the AI era.

Co-founders Tamar Gomez and Wiem Gharbi highlight how AI can modernize the patent process, giving teams analytical depth for stronger strategy and protection, turning IP from a cost center into a growth driver. Early adoption by Fortune 500 companies demonstrates Ankar’s ability to meet real-world needs, while Atomico and clients like L’Oréal underscore the platform’s tailored, high-impact approach.