Laurel
Founded 2018 Β· 309 employees on LinkedIn Β· 18 known investors
Laurel provides AI-powered timesheet automation for professional services firms, helping capture billable hours more accurately and reduce revenue leakage. The platform uses firm-specific machine learning models trained on individual firm data to automate time tracking and provide operational insights.
Also known as Laurel AI Β· Time by Ping
Founders & leadership
Laurel was founded in 2018 by Kourosh Zamani.
Investors Β· 18
Also in the syndicate Β· 7
Funding
SEC filings, press & company announcements$100M disclosed across 1 of 3 rounds Β· 2022β2025
- $100MSeries CJun 2025 Β· 3 sources
IVP (lead), 01 Advisors, ACME, AIX Ventures, Alexis Ohanian, Anthos, Gokul Rajaram, GV, Hans Tung (Notable Capital), Kevin Weil, Rahul Mehta (DST Global), Time Ventures, Vladimir Fedorov
Source β
Source: company announcements and press reports β follow each round's link for the claim.
Valuation Β· disclosed
Disclosed eventsSource: SEC prospectus filings, and round valuations the company or its investors disclosed β follow each entry's link for the claim.
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Laurel operates an AI-based timekeeping and "work intelligence" platform for professional services firms. The software connects to the tools professionals already use β including Slack, Microsoft Outlook and Zoom β and automatically captures, categorizes and describes digital work, reconstructing a practitioner's day into time entries rather than requiring manual timesheet reconstruction. Beyond time capture, the platform reports utilization, cost of service delivery and engagement profitability by client, engagement and person, and is positioned to help firms link time inputs to business outcomes and resource allocation decisions.
The company serves three named segments: legal (billable-minute capture, point-of-entry compliance, fewer write-offs), accounting (automated tracking to lift utilization and show true service delivery cost) and consulting (real-time engagement profitability and early detection of scope creep). Laurel also markets its platform as a way to quantify the ROI of AI tools by measuring productivity before and after adoption, and to identify which workflows are candidates for automation by AI agents. An announced product, Laurel Billing, applies AI agents to flag billing guideline violations and scope overages before bills reach clients.
Enterprise controls are a stated part of the product: no public LLMs, single-tenant AI, bring-your-own-key, SSO and SCIM, in-region storage, field-level encryption and regional data processing, alongside ISO 42001 and SOC 2 Type 2 certifications and stated CCPA, GDPR and HIPAA compliance. Customers control their data, and the company pairs deployments with an implementation and compliance function.
Founding story
Founder and CEO Ryan Alshak, a former litigation attorney at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, started the company after observing how much time was lost in professional services and how poorly existing systems represented how people actually worked. His aim was to capture digital work at its source and eliminate manual timesheets rather than make them easier. Kourosh Zamani, previously VP of Business Development at Bailard, is co-founder and COO.
Business model
Laurel sells enterprise software to professional services firms, engaging prospects through demo requests and supporting deployments with a white-glove implementation and compliance team. Its CEO has described a contracted-revenue base built over roughly two years, indicating contract-based enterprise sales.
Enterprise software contracts with professional services firms; the company references contracted revenue rather than transactional pricing.
Traction
Fortune reported 59 employees and, per the CEO, roughly $26 million of contracted revenue built over the preceding 24 months as of June 2025. Customers span accounting firms such as Ernst & Young, Grant Thornton and GHJ, and law firms including Saul Ewing and Frost Brown Todd; earlier reporting listed Wright Lindsey Jennings and Lerners Lawyers. The company's site cites up to 30 minutes recovered daily per user, 4-11% profit increases and 2.88 additional daily time entries; a 2023 profile cited a stated average 7% profitability increase for customers.
Latest developments
In June 2025 Laurel announced a $100 million Series C led by IVP at a $510 million valuation, including a $20 million employee tender offer. The company has since announced Laurel Billing, an AI-agent product for pre-bill review of billing guideline violations and scope overages, and Proof 2026, its first conference, set for September 23 in New York City. Stated roadmap priorities include expanding the Time Intelligence layer with real-time executive analytics, automating pre-bill workflows, extending beyond law into accounting and consulting, and developing vertical AI agents.
βΈFull profile β market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history, risks & controversies
Market position
Laurel positions itself in an established time-tracking market with an AI-native approach it frames as time and work intelligence rather than timesheet software. Reported competitors include Aderant, a 38-year-old incumbent, and 8VC-backed PointOne. Investor diligence cited by Fortune described uniformly high customer satisfaction scores across legal, accounting and consulting customers.
Rather than simplifying manual timesheets, Laurel aims to remove them by reconstructing work automatically from digital activity, then exposing how entries were built so users can verify and edit them β an approach the CEO frames as trust and transparency being the adoption unlock. Additional differentiators cited include mapping time inputs to business outcomes, audit-oriented compliance with billing rules, early investment in field-level encryption and regional data processing, and quantifying the measurable impact of AI tool adoption.
Technology
Laurel built its own work ontology, ingesting large volumes of digital work signals and training models to interpret the nuances of knowledge work so that a professional's day can be reconstructed without manual input. The company uses large language model technology (its post-2022 overhaul followed early access to GPT-3) within a single-tenant architecture that avoids public LLMs and supports bring-your-own-key. It also emphasizes transparency and control features that let professionals see how entries were constructed and edit them, with firm-level compliance and billing rules layered on, plus field-level encryption and regional data processing. Company terminology includes "Time Intelligence," the "Work Graph" and "True Time".
Go-to-market
Direct enterprise sales via demo requests, supported by customer stories, an ROI calculator, published research and blog content, and a first company conference, Proof 2026, scheduled for September 23 in New York City. Deployments are supported by an implementation and compliance team.
Professional services organizations that bill for time, particularly law firms, accounting firms and consultancies, including large global and national firms. Named customers and users include Ernst & Young, Grant Thornton, Saul Ewing, Frost Brown Todd, GHJ, Aprio, Wright Lindsey Jennings and Lerners Lawyers.
Geography
The company is profiled as headquartered in San Francisco, California, with customers described as global and national firms; the platform offers in-region data storage and regional data processing, and the company is hosting an event in New York City.
History
The company traces its roots to 2016, when it launched as Time by Ping. Early traction was limited, which Alshak attributes to an overcommitment to the legal industry and NLP technology that was not yet capable enough. In 2022, after gaining early access to OpenAI's GPT-3, the team paused work, overhauled the product and reintroduced the company as Laurel; LawSites reported the rebrand in February 2023 as the company expanded into additional verticals. A $36.5 million round was reported in March 2022, and in June 2025 the company announced a $100 million Series C led by IVP at a $510 million valuation.
Risks & controversies
Workplace activity capture raises surveillance concerns; in Fortune's interview the CEO was asked whether the tracking could veer into Orwellian territory and responded by pointing to SOC and ISO compliance, field-level encryption and customer data ownership. The company also has a history of limited early traction under its prior identity, Time by Ping, attributed to narrow industry focus and immature NLP technology, and competes with a long-established incumbent (Aderant) and a venture-backed challenger (PointOne).
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources β 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 β not independently audited.
Timeline Β· 5
launches, deals, and filingsLaurel announced Proof 2026, described as its first conference, to be held September 23 in New York City.
Laurel announced an upcoming product, Laurel Billing, which uses AI agents to identify billing guideline violations and scope overages before bills are sent to clients; a waitlist is open.
Laurel announced a $100 million Series C led by IVP, with GV and 01 Advisors as new investors and participation from existing backers including Time Ventures, ACME, AIX Ventures and Anthos. The round valued the company at $510 million and included a $20 million tender offer, the company's first.
$100M source β
LawSites reported the company's rebrand from Time by Ping to Laurel as it expanded beyond legal into additional verticals.
After gaining early access to OpenAI's GPT-3 in 2022, the company paused work, rebuilt the product and reintroduced itself as Laurel, having previously operated as Time by Ping since 2016.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
In the news
Changes to the Laurel Park racetrack leave community funding in question - The Bannerthebanner.com Β· Jul 2026βΈResearch sources Β· 8
primary sources listed
- Laurellaurel.ai Β· web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Laurel do?
- Laurel is an AI timekeeping and work intelligence platform for legal, accounting and consulting firms.
- Who founded Laurel?
- Laurel was founded by Kourosh Zamani in 2018.
- Who are Laurel's investors?
- Laurel's investors include 01 Advisors, ACME Capital, AIX Ventures, GV (Google Ventures), HAWKTAIL, IVP (Institutional Venture Partners), PROOF, Scribble Ventures and 3 more.
- How much funding has Laurel raised?
- Laurel has disclosed $100M raised across 1 of its 3 known rounds.