Ironclad
Unicorn · $3.2BYC S15San Francisco, US · Founded 2014 · Delaware corporation · 700 employees · Hiring · 25 known investors
Ironclad is an AI platform for digital contract management that helps companies execute faster deals, reduce contract surprises, and measure value. The platform serves enterprise and mid-market organizations managing contract lifecycles.
Also known as Ironclad, Inc. · Ironclad.ai
Founders & leadership· Y Combinator alumni (S15)
Ironclad was founded in 2014 by Jason Boehmig and Cai GoGwilt.
Board
Investors · 25
Also in the syndicate · 1
Reported raises · per SEC filings
Form D private placements$22.8M disclosed across 1 of 6 rounds · 2017–2022
▶$22.8MraisedFeb 2019 · 29 investors · Other TechnologyRule 506(b)
- Jason BoehmigExecutive Officer, Director
- Steve LoughlinDirector
- Jess LeeDirector
- Cai GoGwiltDirector
- Offering amount
- $22.8M
- Amount sold
- $22.8M
- First sale
- Sep 2018
- Incorporated
- Corporation, Delaware, 2014
- Federal exemptions
- 06b
Source: SEC EDGAR Form D. Amounts as filed; amended filings shown once at their latest values.
Valuation · disclosed
Disclosed eventsSource: SEC prospectus filings, and round valuations the company or its investors disclosed — follow each entry's link for the claim.
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Ironclad is a San Francisco-based software-as-a-service company that builds contract lifecycle management (CLM) software. Founded in 2014 by attorney Jason Boehmig, previously of Fenwick & West, and Cai GoGwilt, previously a software engineer at Palantir, the company provides a cloud platform on which legal and business teams create, negotiate, sign, store and analyze contracts. Rather than addressing a single stage of the contract lifecycle, the product spans the whole process: a drag-and-drop workflow designer for building templated contracting processes with tagged fields, approvers and signers; a collaborative editor comparable in function to Google Docs with commenting, versioning and task assignment; a searchable repository holding executed contracts and their metadata; and reporting that visualizes contracts moving through the process and highlights bottlenecks.
Beyond traditional negotiated agreements, Ironclad supports clickwrap agreement tracking (a capability expanded through its 2021 acquisition of PactSafe), native eSignature, obligation tracking, a counterparty/entity hub, and integrations with tools including Salesforce, Coupa, Ramp and cloud storage services such as OneDrive, Dropbox, Box and Google Drive. Its AI layer, built in part on integrations with OpenAI's GPT-3 and GPT-4 models, is used to scan contracts and extract key legal terms, tag and index uploaded documents, assist with redlining, and power Jurist, an agentic assistant that drafts, edits, summarizes, translates and explains contracts. The company markets its platform to legal operations, general counsel, procurement, IT and sales functions in enterprise and mid-market organizations.
The company reports processing more than two billion contracts as of 2025 and names customers such as L'Oréal, Heineken and Salesforce. It has been recognized as a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Contract Lifecycle Management, in The Forrester Wave: Contract Lifecycle Management Platforms, Q1 2025, and as a Digital World Class CLM Provider by The Hackett Group.
Founding story
Jason Boehmig began his career as a bond trader at Lehman Brothers, attended Notre Dame Law School after the financial crisis, and became an attorney at the technology-focused firm Fenwick & West in San Francisco, where he found contract work long and tedious. In August 2014 he met Cai GoGwilt, a former Palantir software engineer, at a legal technology conference, and the two began working on a company to simplify contract creation and management with a scope extending beyond the legal department to functions such as HR and operations. The company, initially known as Ironclad.ai, was founded in 2014 and went through Y Combinator's Summer 2015 batch.
Business model
Ironclad sells its contract lifecycle management platform as cloud-delivered software-as-a-service for a subscription fee, targeting legal, procurement, sales, IT and finance teams inside customer organizations. The platform is modular, spanning workflow design, editing, a contract repository, reporting/insights, clickwrap agreements, native eSignature and AI agents, and its help center documents an "AI Credits" construct governing consumption of AI features.
Subscription fees for cloud-delivered software; Business Insider reported in February 2026 that the company reached $200 million in annual recurring revenue.
Traction
Ironclad reports surpassing one billion contracts processed in 2022 and two billion in 2025, and states that customers including L'Oréal, Heineken and Salesforce move up to 80% faster using the platform. Contrary Research listed 545 employees as of January 2024; Y Combinator lists a team size of 700 and active status. Business Insider reported in February 2026 that the company hit $200 million in ARR. Total funding is reported at $334 million across rounds through Series E, at a $3.2 billion valuation set in January 2022.
Latest developments
Dan Springer became CEO in May 2025 and the company reported surpassing two billion contracts processed the same year. Ironclad was named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for CLM, placed in the Leaders category of The Forrester Wave: CLM Platforms, Q1 2025, and named a Digital World Class CLM Provider by The Hackett Group. Its help center documents 2026 releases including AI Agents, AI Credits and the Ironclad Assistant, and the company published a 2026 State of AI in Legal report. A February 12, 2026 Business Insider article reported that Ironclad reached $200 million in ARR.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history
Market position
Ironclad operates in the contract lifecycle management software market, a category addressing inefficiencies in contracting and procurement where, per cited research, contract and procurement managers spend 25% of their time on low-value activities, the average Fortune 2000 company manages 20,000-40,000 contracts, and only 12% of firms use intelligent CLM. It has been recognized as a Leader by Gartner (2025 Magic Quadrant for CLM), Forrester (Q1 2025 Wave for CLM Platforms) and The Hackett Group, was described by Reuters as a digital contracting "unicorn" at its 2022 Series E, and by 2019 was listed among the top 50 largest Y Combinator companies by valuation.
Ironclad positions itself against other CLM vendors on breadth and flexibility: its product covers the full contract lifecycle rather than a single stage, it emphasizes configurable implementation and the use of contract data to optimize the process, and it introduced a Docx-native editor to bridge Microsoft Word-based drafting with digital workflows. Its AI capabilities — automated metadata extraction (the company claims 194+ AI-detected contract metadata properties), Smart Import, GPT-based redlining assistance and the Jurist agentic assistant — are presented as embedded across every workflow rather than as standalone tools. It also markets in-CRM contract creation and signature and analyst recognition from Gartner, Forrester and The Hackett Group as evidence of category leadership.
Technology
Cloud-delivered application offering configurable contract workflows, a Docx-native collaborative editor, a metadata-rich contract repository with universal search, reporting and insights, clickwrap agreement tracking, native eSignature, obligations and entity management, and SSO/SAML and Google sign-in for authentication. AI features include automated scanning and extraction of key legal terms, automatic tagging and indexing of imported contracts, redlining assistance built on integrations with OpenAI's GPT-3 and GPT-4 large language models, and Jurist, an assistant using agents designed for legal work. Usage of AI functionality is metered through AI Credits. The platform integrates with Salesforce, Coupa, Ramp and cloud storage services including OneDrive, Dropbox, Box and Google Drive.
Go-to-market
Ironclad sells directly to enterprise and mid-market organizations through a demo-request motion on its website, supported by go-to-market functions including sales, customer success, revenue marketing, partnerships, professional services and support under its President. It uses analyst recognition, published customer stories, research content such as its "State of AI in Legal" report, a customer education portal (Ironclad Academy) and the Apex community summit for in-house legal leaders as demand-generation and adoption channels, and distributes contract capabilities through integrations with systems customers already use, including CRMs.
Enterprise and mid-market organizations, with the platform used by legal operations teams, general counsel, procurement, IT, finance and sales. Named customers include L'Oréal, Heineken, Salesforce, Orangetheory and Rodan + Fields.
Geography
Headquartered in San Francisco, California, with a New York office opened in 2019. Job listings reference San Francisco, CA; Indianapolis, IN; New York, NY; and remote roles within the United States.
History
Ironclad was founded in 2014 and opened its first San Francisco office in SOMA in 2015 after participating in Y Combinator's Summer 2015 batch, which supplied its seed funding; it launched with about 200 companies already using the product in beta. A 2017 Series A led by Accel accompanied the launch of its intelligent contract management platform. In 2019 the company raised Series B and Series C capital, grew headcount 220%, opened a New York office and held its first Apex summit for in-house legal leaders. It released a Docx-native editor in 2020, raised a Series D, acquired clickwrap vendor PactSafe and launched Smart Import in 2021, and introduced Ironclad AI, raised a Series E and passed one billion contracts processed in 2022. AI Assist, built on GPT-4, followed in 2023; native eSignature and the Jurist AI assistant arrived in 2024. In February 2023 co-founder Cai GoGwilt moved from CTO to Chief Architect and Jason Li became CTO. In May 2025 Dan Springer, former CEO of DocuSign and Responsys, was named CEO, the same year Ironclad reported crossing two billion contracts processed.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Founder mafia
The Ironclad mafia →8 people who came through Ironclad went on to found or lead other companies.
Competitors · 7
by search overlap
Companies competing with Ironclad for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.
Timeline · 17
launches, deals, and filingsDan Springer, former CEO of DocuSign and Responsys, joined Ironclad as CEO in May 2025.
Ironclad released a native eSignature experience and introduced Jurist, an AI assistant that drafts, edits, summarizes, translates and explains contracts.
Smith joined in August 2023 as CRO and was promoted to President in August 2024, leading go-to-market functions.
Co-founder Cai GoGwilt became Chief Architect in February 2023 after nine years as CTO; Jason Li, previously SVP of Engineering, became CTO.
GPT-4-powered contract negotiation tool that flags risk, drafts clauses and takes a first pass at redlining.
Ironclad introduced Ironclad AI to power contract generation, data extraction and analytics across the contract lifecycle; VentureBeat covered the AI-embedded contract platform in September 2022.
Ironclad acquired clickwrap agreement company PactSafe; the same year it launched Smart Import, an AI tool to upload, tag and index contracts.
AI-powered tool to upload, tag, and index contracts, making them searchable and surfacing insights from contract data.
Ironclad released what it describes as the world's first Docx-native editor, bridging Microsoft Word workflows with digital contracting.
Ironclad opened a New York office, grew headcount by 220%, and launched Apex, its first summit for in-house legal leaders.
Alongside its Series A, Ironclad unveiled its intelligent contract management platform for legal teams to automate and streamline contracting.
Ironclad opened its first headquarters in San Francisco's South of Market (SOMA) district after launching out of Y Combinator.
Ironclad joined Y Combinator's summer 2015 batch, which provided seed funding; the company launched with roughly 200 companies already using the product in beta.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
Legal entities · 1
corporate structureIn the news
▸Research sources · 8
primary sources listed
- Ironcladironcladapp.com · web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Ironclad do?
- Ironclad is a San Francisco SaaS company whose AI-powered platform manages the full contract lifecycle for legal and business teams.
- Who founded Ironclad?
- Ironclad was founded by Jason Boehmig, Cai GoGwilt in 2014.
- Who are Ironclad's investors?
- Ironclad's investors include 500 Global, Accel, Amplo Ventures, Better Tomorrow Ventures, Elevate Ventures, Emergence Capital Partners, Jude Gomila, Khosla Ventures and 16 more.
- How much funding has Ironclad raised?
- Ironclad has disclosed $22.8M raised across 1 of its 6 known rounds.
- Where is Ironclad headquartered?
- Ironclad is headquartered in San Francisco, US.