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- Inside Hyperscale: How GC AI Grew from $1M to $10.8M+ ARR in Less Than a Year and Raised A $60M Series B
Inside Hyperscale: How GC AI Grew from $1M to $10.8M+ ARR in Less Than a Year and Raised A $60M Series B
They're now serving 1000+ in-house legal teams across 50 countries and growing quickly
Amber Illig & Vanessa Samaniego
November 12, 2025
In early-stage building, time compresses. The right idea, with the right founders, in the right moment, can unlock velocity that feels almost surreal - until it happens.
That’s the story of GC AI, the AI platform redefining how in-house legal teams work. We invested in their first round of capital 18 months ago when they were early product and pre-revenue. Today GC AI serves over 1,000 legal departments across 50 countries. On the heels of explosive growth with much more to come, they’ve raised a $60 million Series B at a $555 million valuation, led by Scale Venture Partners and Northzone, with participation from Sound Ventures, Aglaé Ventures, SilverCircle, News Corp - and us, at The Council.
It’s one of the fastest and most focused ascents we’ve seen in this cycle of vertical AI. For us, it represents exactly what we mean when we talk about First Builders: the founders who don’t wait for permission to define a new category.
Hear Directly from Cecilia: What’s Top of Mind in this Moment?
We invited Cecilia back on the First Builders podcast to talk about what the last year has been like and how this $60M will help to accelerate GC AI. In addition to the Series B news, it was an extra special day since she spoke with us on the 2nd anniversary of creating GC AI. Key takeaways from our call include:
Building for her former self as an in-house lawyer
Channeling her ex-Amazon “Day One” mentality as they grow
Hiring people who truly care to maintain institutional excellence
Differences in fundraising between Series A and Series B
Cecilia also shares key wisdom for founders to consider when balancing fundraising and building a business: “I don’t want people telling me that I’m really good at fundraising. Maybe I am. But I want it to be that I’m really good at building a great business.”
Why We Invested in GC AI’s First Round and Every Round Since
For decades, “legal tech” meant tools for law firms. GC AI flipped that narrative.
We met Cecilia and Bardia before GC AI even had a name. What drew us in wasn’t just their technical depth, it was their conviction and First Builder DNA. They weren’t chasing the AI wave; they were solving a real, lived problem.
Companies everywhere are tightly managing the cost of outside counsel. Internally, in-house lawyers are pulled in many directions across platforms like Word, Google Suite, Slack, and more. They’re not just generating contracts. They’re fielding requests from the CEO, the marketing team, and the hiring team all at once. Cecilia Ziniti and Bardia Pourvakil, both ex-Replit, saw that the real legal bottleneck wasn’t in firms. It was inside companies. They built GC AI for the lawyers companies actually employ; the ones responsible for contracts, compliance, and everything else that determines how fast a business can move.
We knew that Cecilia’s lived lawyer experience and Bardia’s AI engineering background would allow them to hit product market fit very quickly if not right out of the gate, and we’re lucky it was the latter.
“Simply put, Cecilia and Bardia are both First Builders through and through. Cecilia has not only been in the shoes of her customers as an in-house lawyer herself, but she has also mastered the gray space between law and frontier tech in former GC roles at Amazon Alexa, Cruise, and Replit. When she was ready to leave Replit to found GC AI, it was an easy yes to invest in GC AI out of The Council’s debut fund. The deal was sweetened when I found out she was co-founding the company with Bardia Pourvakil, an engineer that was building with AI earlier than most at Roam Research and Replit. The two worked with each other at Replit when the company was quite small and growing fast. We specifically look for that “high slope” experience in founders we back.”
In just under a year, the team has gone from $1M to $10.8M+ in ARR with 1,750,000 customer messages sent across the platform. They’re proof that purpose-built technology, when crafted with empathy and specificity, compounds fast. Although we are Pre-seed investors, we have been lucky to invest in every round. At Series A, we doubled down from our core fund. At Series A and Series B, we were able to offer access directly to our LPs via an SPV. We thank Cecilia and Bardia for having us on board for the ride!
Meet GC AI Co-Founders, Cecilia Ziniti and Bardia Pourvaki
Looking Ahead
With this new funding, GC AI is accelerating product development, expanding enterprise capabilities, and deepening its investment in AI agents, integrations, and document precision.
For us, this isn’t just a milestone in our portfolio. It’s a signal of what’s possible when founders build from lived experience and back it with relentless velocity.
We couldn’t be prouder to stand behind GC AI as they help every company - from startups to the Fortune 500 - move faster, smarter, and with greater legal confidence.
Want to get GC AI to your legal teams? Mention “First Builders” in your email subject line and send it [email protected] or [email protected]. You’ll get a personal demo from Cecilia if you’re a friend of The Council!
About Us: The Council Capital invests in high slope operators that are transforming our most essential industries like healthcare, legal, and manufacturing. We’re superpowered by our community of 200+ operator-angels and our alumni networks at Cruise, Snap, and Komodo Health. We also run the First Builders podcast, designed to inspire and attract the founders of tomorrow’s unicorns.