Australian brothers Tim and Dr Ben Toner have raised $23 million for Affinda over the past two years. Recently named by Deloitte as the fastest-growing AI company in Australia, the Melbourne-based firm has leveraged AI to digitise document-intensive processes, driving 364% global growth since 2022.
Melbourne-headquartered company Affinda has a 65-person global workforce that works with 1500 customers in 75 countries, including Bloomberg, Siemens, and Seek. The company previously completed a $13 million raise and closed a further $10m round in November.
Last week, Deloitte named Affinda the fastest-growing AI company in the country.
Dr Ben Toner founded Affinda with his brother Tim in 2012. He has a PhD from Caltech and specialises in quantum physics. Tim was formerly an investment banker at Lazard and Macquarie.
“Generative AI continues to attract a lot of hype, Affinda’s success is through a singular commitment to transforming the operational backbone of businesses, using AI to drive efficiency in less glamorous but mission-critical areas,” Dr Toner tells Forbes Australia.
“Affinda’s technology strikes a crucial balance, automating repetitive tasks while preserving human judgment where it matters.”
Dr Ben Toner
He attributes the growth to a clear focus and an expanded platform that can work with new document types, broadening its customer base. The Affinda Group is made up of three separate businesses: Affinda, Draftable and Vesparum. The AI technology uses computer vision, deep learning, and natural language processing.
“AI is fundamentally transforming our world and the pace is only going to increase. Affinda’s technology strikes a crucial balance, automating repetitive tasks while preserving human judgment where it matters most,” says Dr Toner.
Brothers in arms in an AI-oriented family
“For most people, starting a business with your brother might seem like a terrible idea. But for me, it was the best decision I ever made,” Tim posted on LinkedIn.
“It all began 12 years ago in Ben’s apartment next to The University of Melbourne. I had been working around the clock at Macquarie and Lazard, while Ben was immersed in the world of quantum physics, having recently completed his PhD at Caltech,” says Tim.
The brothers come from an ambitious-tech-oriented family. Their sister Helen Toner is a US-based AI ethics researcher who was recently in the news for stepping down from the Open AI board. Helen calls Washington D.C. home, whereas Tim and Dr Ben have rooted themselves firmly on Australian soil.
“With high hopes, big dreams, and some poker winnings from Crown casino, we set out to build the best tech company we could,” says Tim.
The raises have accelerated the technology and grown the team. It valued the company at $120 million.
Family offices and high-net-worth investors have invested in the company’s most recent $10 million raise, including Simon Mawhinney, Daniel Besen, John Russell, John Wylie, Andrew Best, and Bill Best.
Greg Ellis, formerly the CEO of MYOB, Scout24 and the REA Group, invested earlier this year.
“I have invested in each of Affinda’s funding rounds and I couldn’t be happier with how the business is performing. Affinda has great SaaS metrics but there’s also something very special about their ability to build products that customers love,” says Ellis.
While the company has been using AI for over a decade, the recent boom in the emerging technology presents an opportunity for Affinda to scale, Ellis says.
“Ben and Tim are incredibly impressive as founders and their long-term orientation is both refreshing and a source of sustained competitive advantage. Timing is critical in investing and Affinda couldn’t be better placed as the AI era takes hold.”
Key sectors
The founders say that Affinda technology is ideal for organisations that process a lot of documents and are looking to reduce costs. They have clients in financial services, insurance, and the legal industry.
Draftable, one of the divisions of the Affinda business, focuses on the legal industry. Clients include Fortescue and Brodies. 300 law firms around the world have signed up to Draftable since it launched 12 months ago. The product facilitates advanced redlining and side-by-side comparison of different versions of documents.
Affinda initially focused on the recruitment sector, according to a company statement. The technology helped SEEK ‘review and extract candidate information in resumes.’ Its success in that field was proof of concept, and the product suite is now applied to other industries.
“The same problem of extracting unstructured data from documents exists in nearly every industry, which led to the evolution of its AI technology from a recruitment-specific product to an intelligent document processing platform,” Affinda states.
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