Text IQ
Acquired1,910 employees on LinkedIn · 5 known investors
Relativity applies AI, including generative and agentic AI, to legal data challenges such as litigation, investigations, and data breach response. Its tools help legal teams review documents, identify sensitive information, and analyze case data. (Text IQ, referenced in the page, was acquired by Relativity to apply AI for identifying sensitive data.)
Also known as TextIQ
Investors · 5
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Text IQ was a New York-based artificial intelligence company whose software identified sensitive, confidential, privileged and personally identifiable information hidden in large volumes of unstructured enterprise data. Its products were used by legal, compliance and privacy functions — including chief information officers, chief privacy officers, chief compliance officers and general counsel — at large enterprises, law firms and government organizations, with use cases spanning legal privilege review, data breach response, and identification and management of PII in connection with GDPR and Data Subject Access Requests, as well as CCPA compliance.
The company was founded in 2014 by Apoorv Agarwal (co-founder and CEO) and Omar Haroun (co-founder and COO). Its core technology originated in Agarwal's Columbia University PhD work on social network extraction from text, which produced the "socio-linguistic hypergraph." Text IQ was described as a Top 100 AI company and maintained an advisory board of former general counsel from Apple/Oracle, Verizon, Baxter International and Nationwide Insurance. Alongside its commercial products, it offered an unconscious bias detector as part of an "AI for Good" initiative.
In May 2021, Relativity, a legal and compliance technology company, acquired Text IQ. Relativity stated that Text IQ would continue selling to and servicing its market while integrating with, and embedding capabilities into, RelativityOne and Relativity Trace. Relativity's own history timeline lists the Text IQ acquisition as part of the same year it released Redact, positioning Text IQ as its route to applying AI to identify sensitive data.
Founding story
Text IQ grew out of Apoorv Agarwal's Columbia University doctoral thesis, "Social Network Extraction From Text," which produced the socio-linguistic hypergraph that became the company's core technology. Agarwal, who held a PhD in NLP/ML from Columbia, was previously a member of the IBM Watson core team, authored patents there and received an IBM PhD Fellowship, and had interned at IBM and Morgan Stanley. He co-founded the company in 2014 with Omar Haroun, formerly a managing partner at Oxford Digital Consulting Group, who served as COO.
Business model
Text IQ sold AI software to large enterprises, law firms and government organizations for legal, compliance and privacy work, marketing quantified reductions in review cost and risk. It also worked through a partner channel; ProSearch was described as the first certified Text IQ partner, and Relativity said its partner network providing project-based support and managed services would be able to offer Text IQ's tools.
Enterprise software sales to legal, compliance and privacy departments, with an emphasis on displacing manual document review labor; the company reported eight consecutive quarters of revenue growth and profitability as of its 2019 Series A.
Traction
By the 2019 Series A the company reported eight straight quarters of revenue growth and profitability, team growth of five to eight times over the preceding eight months, and plans to double headcount by the end of 2019. Its technology was in use across legal, compliance and privacy departments in the Global 2000.
Latest developments
Relativity has continued to develop AI for legal data, including its Relativity aiR generative AI product suite and agentic workflows, and its published company timeline records the Text IQ acquisition as the step through which it added AI for identifying sensitive data. Text IQ's co-founder and CEO has since described the 2021 sale as a successful exit and moved into advising and seed investing.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history
Market position
Positioned as an AI specialist for sensitive-data detection in legal, compliance and privacy workflows across most major industries in the Global 2000, and characterized as a Top 100 AI company. Relativity framed the acquisition as strengthening its leadership in AI for e-discovery, compliance and privacy.
Differentiators cited included unsupervised rather than supervised learning, social network analysis of communications via the Socio-Linguistic Hypergraph, and quantified outcomes: identification of sensitive information at roughly ten times the speed and four times lower cost than traditional methods, more than 50% reduction in the risk of missing sensitive information, up to 75% reduction in the time and cost of privilege document review, and coverage of about 90% of sensitive information at a 75% reduction in cost and time. Its investor also noted that every prospect completing a proof of concept converted to a customer.
Technology
The platform combined unsupervised machine learning, graphical modeling, social network analysis, natural language processing and deep learning. A central element was the Socio-Linguistic Hypergraph, which extracted complete social networks from unstructured text — including who communicates with whom and how communication differs across groups — allowing the system to find every trace of a person in a data set with limited human input. Models were designed to scale horizontally across large data sets and improve in real time.
Go-to-market
Direct enterprise sales to legal, compliance and privacy leaders, supported by proof-of-concept engagements, plus a certified partner program with e-discovery service providers.
Fortune 500 and Global 2000 enterprises, law firms and government agencies, sold to executives such as general counsel, chief information officers, chief compliance officers and chief privacy officers. Reported customer concentration included five of the top ten life sciences companies and four of the top ten banks; Comcast Cable and Seyfarth Shaw were cited as users.
Geography
Headquartered in the New York City area; its acquirer Relativity is based in Chicago and serves users in 49 countries.
History
Founded in 2014 in New York, Text IQ raised a $12.6 million Series A announced in 2019, led by FirstMark Capital with participation from Sierra Ventures, bringing total funding disclosed at that time to $15.6 million. The round was earmarked for product development and expansion from legal into enterprise compliance and privacy. On 27 May 2021 Relativity announced its acquisition of Text IQ, two months after Silver Lake had made a substantial minority investment in Relativity. Following the transaction Text IQ continued to offer its core privacy, legal and compliance products and its unconscious bias detector while integrating with Relativity's platform.
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.
Timeline · 2
launches, deals, and filingsRelativity, a global legal and compliance technology company, announced it had acquired Text IQ. Text IQ was to continue selling and servicing its products while building integrations with Relativity and embedding core capabilities into RelativityOne and Relativity Trace.
Text IQ announced a $12.6 million Series A led by FirstMark Capital with participation from Sierra Ventures, to fund product development and expansion into enterprise compliance and privacy. Total funding raised reached $15.6 million.
$12.6M source ↗
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
▸Research sources · 8
primary sources listed
- Text IQtextiq.com · web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Text IQ do?
- Text IQ built AI software that finds sensitive, privileged and personal data in enterprise records; acquired by Relativity in 2021.
- Who are Text IQ's investors?
- Text IQ's investors include Cerity Partners Ventures, FirstMark Capital, Floodgate, Intel Capital, Pathbreaker Ventures.