The ProVen VCTs have announced that they have exited their investment in Aistemos following an acquisition of the company by LexisNexis, part of RELX, to enhance PatentSight, its flagship intellectual property (IP) analytics solution.

Aistemos enables businesses to access data on patented technology with greater speed and accuracy. The company trades under the brand of its core product, Cipher, and it uses artificial intelligence (AI) and supervised machine learning to map patents to technologies using custom and industry standard taxonomies to understand emerging trends in innovation.

This technology provides Cipher clients with valuable insights into their patent libraries, patent portfolios across their respective industries, and potential areas for future technological innovation. This drastically reduces the time spent manually managing and analysing patent information.

The ProVen VCTs first invested in Aistemos in 2018 to help the company further develop Cipher and launch sector-specific solutions.

Aistemos was co-founded in 2013 by Nigel Swycher – an IP lawyer with more than two decades of experience – and Steve Harris, an experienced technical leader who had exited his previous start-up, Garlik, to Experian.

Harry Thomas, Portfolio Director at Beringea, the investment manager of the ProVen VCTs, commented: “This transaction is a testament to the groundbreaking technology behind Cipher and its transformation of intellectual property (IP) intelligence through AI and machine learning. We look forward to seeing Aistemos innovate even further as part of RELX.”