Nylon opens $20m seed round after Law Cyborg rebrand

Auckland legaltech company Nylon has opened a seed funding round to raise $20 million and rebranded from Law Cyborg.

The funding will support expansion in the United Kingdom and product development for the United States, which it sees as its biggest market opportunity. Nylon now serves close to 2,000 accounting and law firms across New Zealand, Australia and the UK, including two members of the Big Four.

The move marks the latest step for a business founded by Andrew Wierda, a former tax lawyer at EY Law. He built the original product after finding existing research tools inadequate for professional use. He began by registering a domain name, creating an app and using it in his own legal work before signing up about 40 firms.

That early traction led to an angel round led by Adam Clark, former Chief Executive Officer of M-Com, with backing from investment firm K1W1, King's Counsel Michael Heron, PwC veteran Geof Nightingale and entrepreneur Serge van Dam. The company later raised $2 million in pre-seed funding from Australasian venture firm Blackbird, moved into a dedicated Auckland office and expanded its product from tax into employment law.

Nylon entered Australia and the UK with its core tax law offering and now covers all areas of New Zealand and Australian law. It has a team of 25, most of them based in Auckland.

Wierda said the latest fundraising effort would draw on both domestic and overseas backers.

"We've had fantastic support from New Zealand investors who backed us early," said Andrew Wierda, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Nylon.

"As we take on the global incumbents, we're also looking to bring in international investors who know these markets well and can help us really scale up and go global."

The new name reflects a broader ambition to position the business as a core software provider for lawyers and accountants. The rebrand comes alongside a wider product push as generative AI tools draw more attention from professional services firms looking to automate research and documentation tasks.

"AI is fundamentally changing the way lawyers and accountants work, the world over. We want to be the ones building the technology they rely on and trust every day," Wierda said.

Product launch

Alongside the fundraising, Nylon has introduced a meeting bot for accounting and legal client meetings. The tool takes notes during meetings and flags potential issues in a summary at the end.

The software is designed to do more than record discussion. It identifies possible tax exposures, compliance concerns and other risks raised in conversation. Nylon is targeting professional advisers who need tools that can surface issues while preserving a clear record of where conclusions come from.

"Most note-takers just write down what was said. Ours actually understands the substance," Wierda said.

"If something doesn't look right, a tax exposure, a compliance issue, a risk that's been missed, it spots it and tells everyone. It's like having a sharp junior in every meeting who never misses a detail."

Trusted sources

Nylon said its system limits answers to a defined set of sources, including tax law, case files and government material. It also provides in-text citations and a confidence score with each answer, an approach aimed at users who need to check legal or tax sources rather than rely on general-purpose AI responses.

That distinction has become increasingly important as accounting and legal firms test AI tools in work that carries regulatory and professional risk. In those settings, source verification and traceability are often as important as speed.

Wierda said the business wanted to show a New Zealand company could compete internationally while keeping product development at home.

"There's a real opportunity here to show that a New Zealand company can compete with the biggest names in the world in legal and tax research," he said.

"Keeping our team and our development here while we grow offshore is something we care a lot about."

The company linked the new brand directly to that positioning in the advisory market.

"Just as nylon is the material that forms the gear the world's best mountaineers rely on for their jobs, we are becoming the software that the world's best advisers rely on for theirs," Wierda said.