AI partnership launched to support the next generation of Bristol entrepreneurs

Bristol University’s ground-breaking Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship has partnered with a leading AI specialist.

Genie AI is the UKʼs largest open source legal library and provides students with free access to legal templates and documents.

The deal aims to support the next generation of entrepreneurs with the legal contracts they need to start and grow a business.

Bristol has a thriving start-up ecosystem, with the city having the largest number of high-growth technology companies in the South West.

The Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship supports future founders to build their business ideas and launch their entrepreneur journey.

Students from various academic backgrounds bring together their knowledge and passion to identify social and commercial opportunities, with the Centre supporting hundreds of entrepreneurs to date.

Some of the big success stories include Welleasy, a healthy snacks business, Peequal, a system to reduce womenʼs toilet queues at festivals, Kaedim, technology to create 3D models from images and Vive, pioneering mental wellbeing business.

Business founders need a range of legal contracts, from founder and collaboration agreements to patent assignments and term sheets.

With Genie AI, users can find, draft, edit and sign legally-sound contracts in minutes.

With this partnership legal template library will be accessible to all centre students, cutting an average of £30,000 in legal costs in the run up to their Series A funding round.

Genie AI team members also provide mentoring as part of the Centre for Innovation’s new Runway project.

Mark Neild, programme director for Runway, said: “Our job at Runway is to empower student ventures to have maximum impact.

“Start-ups never have enough resources and legal support is expensive and often takes a back seat to getting customers. But this can then come back to bite.

“Genie AI has brought the cost and effort down to zero for my students to get open-source templates, data and insights, which will empower future founders with the confidence they need to sign deals knowing they will not be taken for a ride.”

Rafie Faruq, Genie AI chief executive, added: “Our partnership with the Centre for Innovation and Excellence is part of our long-term plan to give back to UKʼs most innovative universities, as we span out of UCLʼs artificial intelligence lab.

“This partnership adds to the ongoing collaborations we have with Imperial College and Oxford University. Deep technology takes years to build, and we would like to contribute by significantly reducing the legal cost burden for the next generation of startup entrepreneurs.”

Alex Asher, University of Bristol graduate and co-founder of mifu said: “We found an abundance of confusing and expensive legal offers out there when starting mifu, an AI powered digital marketing start-up. We are delighted that Runway will provide more legal support via Genie AI.

“This will greatly simplify the process of sourcing our legal early-stage venture frameworks and help us move forward with more confidence and one less cost.”