Stilta

Agentic AI for patent attorneys

Winter 2026ActiveB2BLegalTechAISan Francisco, CA, USA

Company

Stilta builds agentic AI software for patent attorneys. Since launching in February, we have gone from $0 to $15k MRR with leading IP firms and in-house IP teams at enterprises, including Fortune Global 50 companies. Innovation drives the world's most important breakthroughs, but the tools that protect it haven't kept pace. Patent attorneys do high-stakes work with a process still built on manual document review and disconnected point solutions. Generative AI helps with drafting, but it doesn't deliver the trust and transparency that legal-grade work demands - no sources, no traceability, no audit trail. Stilta takes a different approach. We use agentic AI to run search and analysis at a scale manual methods can't match, with every output source-backed, referenced, and auditable. Until recently, this wasn't technically possible. We're four engineers from McKinsey/QuantumBlack who built and deployed AI systems at some of the world's largest organizations. With Stilta, we're equipping the people who protect the world's most valuable ideas with tools that match the stakes.

Verdict

High Signal

Market Opportunity

IP legal tech is a well-established B2B enterprise market with clear ICP (IP attorneys at law firms and Fortune 500 in-house teams). The global patent analytics market alone exceeds $1B and the broader IP management software market is multi-billion. Fortune Global 50 customers represent massive ACVs. Monetization is straightforward SaaS.

Medium Signal

Founder Signal

Four-person team with overlapping McKinsey/QuantumBlack AI engineering backgrounds. Strongest signal is Oskar Block (CEO) who bootstrapped two sports betting startups to $1M ARR and 25k MAU — he has proven he can build and monetize a product. Petrus Werner (CTO) has 3+ years as AI/Data Engineer at QuantumBlack plus AWS ML Engineer experience — solid technical depth. Tobias Estreen has nearly 4 years as Lead Data Scientist at QuantumBlack/McKinsey. Oscar Adamsson (CPO) is the weakest — only 1.5 years at McKinsey post-grad before founding. Team is technically capable but McKinsey-heavy; the concern is whether they truly understand patent attorney workflows beyond surface-level consulting observations.

Low Signal

Competition

The legal tech IP space is crowded: Anaqua, CPA Global (Clarivate), Patsnap, Derwent Innovation, and newer AI entrants like Patlytics, Novelty, and IQStrategix all compete directly. The 'agentic AI with traceability' positioning is a real differentiator vs. general-purpose LLM wrappers, but multiple well-funded incumbents have deep patent database integrations. Big law tech incumbents have distribution advantages and IP firms are notoriously slow to switch vendors.

Medium Signal

Product

Website shows specific product modules (Infringement Monitoring, Invalidity Analysis, Portfolio Assessment) with feature detail and a free infringement analysis CTA. The company claims $15k MRR since February launch, which is real early traction, but no named customer logos, no testimonials, and no pricing page visible. SOC 2 Type II compliance and enterprise deployment options suggest a production-ready product.

OverallB Tier

Stilta has real early traction — $15k MRR in roughly one month is a meaningful signal for an enterprise legal tech product. The founding team's combination of AI engineering depth (Petrus/Tobias from QuantumBlack) and Oskar Block's proven ability to build and monetize products gives this more credibility than most YC W26 AI-wrapper plays. The core insight — that patent attorneys need traceable, auditable AI output rather than black-box suggestions — is correct and defensible. The risks: the patent intelligence market is crowded with deep-pocketed incumbents (Clarivate, Patsnap) who already have 200M+ patent databases and enterprise contracts; $15k MRR is early and needs to scale fast to prove retention; and the McKinsey pedigree, while impressive, is a consulting culture that sometimes struggles with the grind of bottom-up SaaS sales into conservative legal buyers.

Active Founders

Oscar Adamsson

Founder

Oscar is co-founder of Stilta, building agentic AI software for patent attorneys. Before Stilta, he built products at a unicorn, was a founder himself, and worked with 50+ CEOs at McKinsey to shape Sweden's innovation agenda. He has a background as a competitive mathematician, with degrees in business and AI from Chalmers and other top Swedish universities, plus coursework at UC Berkeley and Bocconi.

Oskar Block

Founder

Oskar is CEO of Stilta, building agentic AI for patent attorneys. Prior to Stilta, he worked at McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, and two Swedish unicorns. In parallel, he’s also founded and bootstrapped two sports betting startups to +$1M ARR and +25,000 monthly active users.

Tobias Estreen

Founder

Tobias is co-founder of Stilta, building agentic AI software for patent attorneys. Previously at McKinsey & Company, he led teams developing agentic AI systems for global clients. He is a second-time founder with a background in physics and machine learning from KTH and KU Leuven, bringing deep technical expertise and a track record of building AI systems for complex, high-stakes environments.

Petrus Werner

Co-founder & CTO

Founder and CTO of Stilta, building software and service for patent intelligence. Prior to Stilta, he worked at QuantumBlack (McKinsey & Company) and Amazon Web Services with significant experience in building scalable AI systems.

Stilta

TierB Tier

BatchWinter 2026

Team Size4

StatusActive

LocationSan Francisco, CA, USA