From General Counsel to Founder: How a Lawyer Built AI Software for Corporate Legal Teams

A colleague at Replit once suggested that Cecilia Ziniti, the company's general counsel, seemed preoccupied with artificial intelligence rather than focused on her legal role. Ziniti acknowledged the observation was accurate. Her fascination with AI technology would ultimately lead her to abandon her law career and launch GC AI, a venture-backed startup delivering AI solutions tailored to corporate legal departments.

Before founding GC AI, Ziniti had accumulated roughly two decades of legal experience at organizations including Amazon, Cruise, and Anki. She had never written code, never started a business, and lacked the technical background common among venture-backed software founders. Yet her time at Replit provided early exposure to generative AI that would prove transformative.

An early look at GPT

During late 2021 and early 2022, Replit collaborated with OpenAI on AI-driven coding tools, granting Ziniti access to an early iteration of GPT before ChatGPT became publicly available. This exposure prompted her to contemplate how the technology could serve the legal profession.

Ziniti subsequently conducted training sessions on applying ChatGPT to legal practice. Through these classes, she identified a critical problem: general-purpose chatbots could not adequately serve a profession demanding precision, proper sourcing, and appropriate professional tone.

In one session, she asked ChatGPT to analyze legal requirements for entering the Brazilian market. While the response addressed relevant considerations, it opened with casual language about visiting Rio and purchasing surfboards. This moment crystallized Ziniti's realization that a meaningful gap existed between AI-generated content and material suitable for professional legal use. She recognized that addressing these shortcomings could become the foundation for a product.

As her concept took shape, Ziniti partnered with Bardia Pourvakil, an engineer from her Replit days who possessed expertise in earlier GPT iterations. Pourvakil had gained admission to Stanford Law School but pursued engineering instead, partly anticipating that AI would eventually handle certain legal tasks.

"I would teach these classes in the morning and tell my co-founder in the afternoon, 'Our software needs to provide accurate citations. Our software needs to tell you where in the document it's getting the backup for this. Our software needs to speak in this way,'" she said.

A founder who was also the customer

Their respective skill sets proved complementary. Pourvakil possessed the technical capability to construct the platform, while Ziniti possessed intimate knowledge of the legal work the system would support.

"I am a better founder for GC AI than I think anyone could be because I was the ICP," Ziniti said, referring to the startup term "ideal customer profile." "I was able to step up and meet the moment, even though I don't code."

Her deep understanding of the target market stemmed from a legal career spanning multiple organizations and roles. Ziniti began her professional journey as a paralegal at Yahoo, progressed to Morrison & Foerster, and subsequently held senior legal positions at Amazon, Cruise, robotics company Anki, and Replit.

While Replit crystallized her understanding of AI's potential for legal work, her exposure to the technology predated the current wave of generative AI enthusiasm. In 2013, she became Amazon's first dedicated full-time lawyer focused on Alexa. Subsequently, she encountered additional AI applications through autonomous vehicle work at Cruise and robotics initiatives at Anki.

Significantly, most of her career unfolded within corporate legal departments rather than traditional law firms. Drawing on this background, Ziniti chose to concentrate GC AI's efforts on in-house legal teams rather than law firms.

From idea to company

Ziniti departed Replit on November 1, 2023, and established GC AI in San Mateo, California approximately one week later.

The company initially developed an AI assistant designed for corporate legal departments, subsequently expanding to include contract analysis capabilities and tools for managing incoming requests to legal teams.

GC AI has demonstrated substantial expansion, achieving 400% year-over-year growth according to Ziniti. The platform now supports approximately 2,100 companies, compared to roughly 900 the previous year. Its customer base encompasses both large corporations and startups with minimal in-house legal resources, featuring clients such as Lockheed Martin, Time, Eventbrite, Vercel, and Gusto.

The company generates revenue through per-seat subscription models and supplementary offerings, including a contract-analysis tool billed according to document volume. It additionally provides a platform for receiving and responding to requests directed to legal departments.

Although GC AI competes with legal-focused AI startups Harvey and Legora, Ziniti noted that these competitors primarily serve distinct market segments. Harvey and Legora initially targeted law firms, whereas GC AI has maintained focus on corporations and their internal legal teams from inception.

The contract intelligence product, for instance, concentrates on analyzing a company's proprietary documents, whereas law firm tools must accommodate materials from thousands of distinct clients. According to Ziniti, nearly 30% of GC AI's user seats are occupied by professionals outside legal departments, including human resources and finance personnel.

Ziniti attributes her extensive legal background with helping GC AI overcome a fundamental obstacle in marketing AI solutions to corporate legal departments: establishing confidence.

"It is the number one most important thing," she said.

Approximately one-third of GC AI's 125-person workforce consists of attorneys, according to Ziniti. The organization pursued SOC 2 certification early in its development, implemented data-isolation safeguards, and maintains that it does not utilize customer confidential information to train its models.

A longtime customer characterized their perception of GC AI's distinction from general-purpose AI platforms in terms Ziniti recalled this way: "Trust, trust, trust. Oh, and trust."

A different route into venture capital

Though new to founding, Ziniti possessed some familiarity with venture capital circles. She had made angel investments and served as general counsel at multiple venture-backed enterprises, relationships that facilitated connections with potential investors before launching her own fundraising efforts.

Amber Illig, founder of The Council, a venture firm specializing in backing experienced professionals launching their first companies, provided one of GC AI's initial funding commitments. Ziniti and Illig had previously collaborated at Cruise.

"Once you get one commit, then it's relatively easy," Ziniti said of the company's seed round.

GC AI has accumulated approximately $72 million in funding across three financing rounds. The most recent funding event, a $60 million Series B round, was jointly led by Scale Venture Partners and Northzone and valued the company at $555 million. Sound Ventures, Aglaé Ventures, SilverCircle Partners, News Corp, and The Council also participated in the round.

Approximately 45 general counsels have invested in GC AI through a dedicated special-purpose vehicle, according to Ziniti.

Ziniti's trajectory demonstrates an emerging category of software founders emerging from the generative AI wave. These founders combine deep industry expertise with recognition of a specific technological application but require a technical collaborator to execute the vision.

For Ziniti, the GC AI concept materialized at the intersection of two distinct career phases. Her position at Replit granted her early access to generative AI, while her background as an in-house legal professional provided concrete understanding of what a legal AI product should accomplish.

"You have a unique insight on the world in some way from your life experience," she said. "I did, and I built around that."