UK firm Ankar bags €3.5M to accelerate its ‘AI for inventors’ platform

London-based Ankar, an AI platform for Intellectual Property, has raised £3M (approximately €3.5M) in a Seed funding round led by Index Ventures.

Index Ventures is a London-based venture capital firm that helps entrepreneurs turn bold ideas into transformative international businesses.

Hannah Seal, Partner at Index Ventures, says, “Tamar and Wiem are redefining how innovation is captured, protected, and commercialised — turning IP from a defensive legal asset into a strategic growth lever. As innovation and R&D lie at the heart of economic growth and progress more broadly, we’re excited to back Ankar on their mission to empower more teams to turn bold ideas into lasting outcomes.”

Participating investors include: Daphni, Motier Ventures, Booom, and Puzzle Ventures, as well as leading angels, including Datadog CEO, Olivier Pomel, and Hugging Face CTO, Julien Chaumond.

Ankar AI: AI platform for Intellectual Property

Founded by Palantir alumni Tamar Gomez and Wiem Gharbi, Ankar AI leveraged AI agents to transform how innovators and companies across the world capture, protect, and monetise their intellectual property (IP).

While at Palantir, the founding duo faced challenges in the patent process, including long calls, language barriers, and hours spent on paperwork.

These frustrations inspired them to create a simple AI-powered solution to help research and development reach its full potential.

The company is creating a platform for inventors to improve their work in managing intellectual property.

“Recent developments in artificial intelligence signal a seismic shift in how humanity invents,” says Tamar Gomez, co-founder of Ankar. “As AI becomes more deeply integrated with the invention process, we’re about to witness an explosion in the rate of discovery. Ankar is positioning itself at the centre of this transformation by building the operating system of innovation.” 

It will offer high-quality software and use advanced technology for tasks like IP search, patent filing, freedom-to-operate analysis, and infringement detection.

How does it work?

Ankar’s platform uses advanced artificial intelligence trained on scientific and legal data to navigate the global invention landscape.

It speeds up the invention process by identifying patent gaps, assessing originality, drafting unique patent submissions, and detecting infringements while uncovering new licensing opportunities.

This leads to lower intellectual property (IP) costs and creates new revenue streams through the monetisation and commercialisation of discoveries.

Within just one year of founding, Ankar has deployed its technology to many leading Fortune500 innovators, including enterprises and global brands across the automotive, aeronautics, pharmaceutical, and software industries.