
Hence Technologies has launched an AI-powered platform, Hence Global, which is designed to ‘proactively manage and mitigate the growing complexities of global risks’. Law firms and GCs are part of the target audience.
And as Hence rightly points out, it comes ‘at a critical juncture for businesses. Every day the unruly collision of politics, technology, and law is manifesting in shifting political landscapes, unprecedented trade fractures, market uncertainties and volatility’.
(Did anyone mention Donald Trump…?)
All well and good. But…what does it do?
They explain that it leverages AI to ‘deeply understand each user’s unique business profile, including their operational footprint, customer base and business vulnerabilities’.
Then ‘by analyzing vast amounts of public information and integrating it with deep knowledge of the user and AI-driven learning, the platform delivers tailored insights and alerts on global risks that directly impact specific elements of an organization’.
For example, they explain that: ‘Hence Global provides distinct analysis and recommendations regarding trade tariffs for an energy company’s General Counsel versus its Head of Government Affairs, or a supermarket chain’s supply chain manager versus its CFO. It can further be used to track risks for a users’ array of clients to understand the particular risks and opportunities that global events pose for each.’
Julio Maniratunga, Head of Engineering, commented: ‘Our data pipeline analyzes millions of global news items daily. Custom entity recognition models extract key actors, events and regulatory shifts, mapped to each user’s unique business context. The system continuously sharpens relevance through user feedback, filtering signal from noise. Meanwhile, our engineering team ships fast and iterates constantly – so the platform evolves as fast as the world does.’
And, Sean West, co-founder of Hence Technologies, added: ‘In today’s climate of market fluctuations and escalating international tensions, understanding and effectively managing the risks of changing political, legal and technological systems is no longer a luxury, but a necessity for business resilience.’
Overall, it makes a lot of sense and mirrors the type of work some tech companies, e.g. Palantir, provide to governments around the world in terms of advance mapping of risks. Although in this case Hence is very familiar with the legal world and one can see global law firms and the inhouse teams of multi-national companies finding this useful.
You can find more about Hence here.