Robert Ambrogi Blog
Tradespace, the San Francisco-based AI-powered intellectual property management platform, has acquired Paragon, an AI patent-drafting startup founded by three Princeton University computer science students.
The acquisition, Tradespace says, makes it the first AI-powered platform to support the complete IP lifecycle, from initial invention disclosure through patent drafting, prosecution, portfolio management and commercialization.
The deal brings together two companies with complementary missions around democratizing access to patent protection.
Tradespace was founded in 2019 by CEO Alec Sorensen, who formerly founded and led the IP practice at the management consulting firm Avascent, and CTO Kapil Israni, an engineer and entrepreneur, while Paragon emerged from Princeton’s computer science program with a focus on addressing the accessibility challenges in patent drafting.
The acquisition was announced Nov. 10.
Paragon’s Student Founders
Paragon CEO and co-founder AbdurRahman (AR) Bhatti first envisioned the company as a teenager after seeking a patent for his own invention, and by his sophomore year at Princeton, he had 11 patents to his name.
As AI technology matured, he assembled two of his Princeton classmates, chief technology officer Ethan Haque and chief engineer Claire Shin, to create a platform that would make professional-grade patent drafting more accessible.
Princeton University’s Office of Innovation supported the startup and offered the student founders access to past invention disclosures to train their algorithm, allowing them to test their drafting capabilities by comparing outputs to patents that were actually filed, according to Craig Arnold, Princeton’s vice dean of innovation and university innovation officer.
“In line with our educational mission, our Technology Licensing team recognized the potential benefit of an AI patent-drafting platform and offered the student founders access to a curated number of past invention disclosures to train their algorithm,” Arnold said.
Haque and Shin graduated from Princeton last spring, while Bhatti is set to graduate in the fall. All three are joining Tradespace, with Bhatti taking on the role of head of product for patent drafting, while Haque and Shin join as senior members of the AI research team.
The Patent-Drafting Bottleneck
The acquisition targets a major pain point in the IP ecosystem, Tradespace says. Traditional patent drafting can take months and cost tens of thousands of dollars, creating a bottleneck that prevents many innovations from being protected. This is particularly challenging as organizations face mounting pressure to accelerate innovation while managing legal costs.
Using AI agents, Paragon generates accurate, defensible patent drafts with full traceability to source materials, giving R&D and IP teams confidence that every claim, citation and technical detail can be verified and defended.
The company says that the platform is distinct from other AI patent tools because it keeps users in control at every decision point, with verification checkpoints designed to maintain professional IP standards — an important factor for legal professionals who may have concerns about trusting AI with high-stakes work.
“When I founded Tradespace, the vision was clear: empower organizations to develop, protect, and commercialize ideas at a much greater scale,” said Sorensen. “In acquiring Paragon, we are investing not only in democratizing the patent drafting process, but in building an approach to legal AI that works alongside IP teams with the same levels of trust, transparency and expertise they would get from an attorney.”
Tradespace’s Evolution
Sorensen co-founded the company in 2017 after spending years in management consulting, working with Fortune 500 companies, private equity firms and government labs to analyze and commercialize their IP.
The company announced $4.2 million in seed funding in November 2023, led by Eniac Ventures with participation from Abstract Ventures, Amplo VC, and Scrum Ventures, bringing its total funding to $5.2 million.
That funding round coincided with the release of its AI-powered IP Management Platform, which the company said was trained on the largest dataset of open-source and proprietary IP data.
At the time of that 2023 funding round, Tradespace said it had generated over $100 million in IP commercialization revenue for customers including America’s Frontier Fund, BAE Systems, and the Department of Defense. Other clients of the company include AGC, leading research institutions like the Department of Energy, MITRE, and Northeastern University, as well as companies like 8×8.
With Paragon integrated into its platform, Tradespace plans to draft 10,000 patents through the platform in the next 18 months — an ambitious target that signals the company’s confidence in scaling AI-assisted patent drafting.
For Bhatti, the acquisition represents the best path to maximize impact. “For me, it’s always just been about where this technology is going to serve the most people,” he said.
“We wanted to make patent drafting accessible to innovators who needed it. Joining Tradespace makes sense as a natural fit — we get to integrate as a link in the chain of what is already a really strong product.”
The Bottom Line
Tradespace’s acquisition of Paragon is interesting in and of itself, but also because it reflects three broader trends related to AI in legal:
- The growing number of companies that are moving beyond point solutions toward more-comprehensive platforms that address entire workflows.
- The changing economics of patent protection, whereby AI can lower the cost of patent drafting and potentially open patent protection to a broader range of inventors.
- The importance of incorporating transparency and traceability in the design of AI products, to address legal professionals’ concerns.
There is also the human-in-the-loop issue, which is why it is notable that Paragon says its agents work alongside users and keep them in control at every decision point.
“This human-AI collaboration addresses the legal industry’s biggest concern: trusting AI with high-stakes professional work,” the company says.