Curiosity VC’s pre-seed investment in Rotterdam-based Lynk is a clear signal that AI-native contract intelligence is graduating from pilot projects to core infrastructure in Europe’s workflows-heavy industries.
The undisclosed round, recently announced and led by European AI specialist Curiosity VC alongside strategic angels, gives Lynk early institutional backing to scale its AI-driven contract control platform in the Netherlands and beyond.
AI moves into the contract back office
Lynk sits at the intersection of two strong currents in European tech: the rapid verticalisation of AI and the professionalisation of historically manual back-office processes.
Across real estate, general contracting and other asset- and project-heavy sectors, companies still manage hundreds of thousands of pages of obligations in Excel and shared drives. This manual approach is slow, error-prone and structurally misaligned with growing regulatory and operational complexity.
Lynk’s answer is a collaborative AI contract workspace with an embedded contract intelligence layer. The platform ingests contracts, automates audits, surfaces risks and tracks key actions across the contract lifecycle. By reducing manual administrative work, Lynk aims to accelerate decision-making, prevent missed obligations and improve financial outcomes for mid-sized organisations.
Curiosity VC doubles down on AI for the future of work
For Curiosity VC, which focuses on early-stage AI-driven B2B software, Lynk fits squarely into its thesis around the future of work and automation of complex knowledge tasks.
Contract management has become a prime target for AI over the next five years, as legal, operational and finance teams look to automate repetitive review, monitoring and reporting. The rise in contract volume and complexity – particularly in real estate portfolios and large general contracting frameworks – is outpacing what human teams can reliably track with spreadsheets and manual checks.
By leading Lynk’s pre-seed round, Curiosity VC is effectively validating AI contract control as a distinct software category in Europe, rather than a feature bolted onto generic document management or e-signature tools.
From generic CLM to sector-grade contract intelligence
The mid-market has long relied on a mix of basic contract lifecycle management (CLM) tools and manual oversight. Lynk is part of a new wave of AI-first platforms that go deeper into sector-specific needs.
Developed with industry stakeholders in sectors characterised by complex, multi-party agreements, Lynk is built to handle:
- Large-scale audits of extensive contract portfolios
- Risk identification across clauses, obligations and dates
- Action tracking to ensure operational teams act on what contracts require
That focus matters in markets like real estate and general contracting, where a missed indexation clause, unnoticed penalty or misaligned obligation can move P&L meaningfully – and where contract teams often handle tens of thousands of pages of documentation with limited headcount.
Why this matters for Europe’s mid-market
For European mid-market companies – typically dealing with deal sizes and project values in the EUR 10m–500m range – contract control is no longer just a legal hygiene issue. It is a lever for cash flow, risk management and compliance.
AI is set to reshape contract auditing and management in this segment by:
- Automating repetitive legal and financial checks, freeing specialists for higher-value work
- Improving visibility on obligations and rights, which directly impacts revenue recognition, pricing adjustments and penalties
- Standardising processes across portfolios, a prerequisite for institutional investors and lenders assessing risk
Lynk’s positioning as an AI-native, collaborative workspace aligns with this shift from static document storage to dynamic, data-driven contract operations.
Competitive and execution risks
The AI contract space is increasingly crowded, with horizontal AI tools and CLM suites racing to add “intelligence” layers. Lynk’s bet is that depth in complex, obligation-heavy sectors will trump generic capabilities.
Execution risk centres on three areas:
- Data quality and integration – delivering reliable automation depends on clean inputs and tight integration with existing systems.
- User adoption – legal and operations teams are cautious; tools must embed seamlessly into workflows.
- Differentiation – Lynk will need to maintain a clear edge in sector-specific models and collaboration features as larger vendors move in.
Curiosity VC’s involvement, alongside strategic angels, provides both capital and network to navigate these hurdles. It also strengthens Lynk’s signalling power with enterprise buyers who increasingly look for well-backed, specialist vendors.
A broader shift in how contracts are run
Viewed through a market lens, this pre-seed round is less about the cheque size and more about the direction of travel. As AI moves deeper into operational backbones, contract control is emerging as a priority use case in Europe’s mid-market.
Lynk’s funding underscores a broader trend: contracts are no longer static PDFs to be filed away, but living data assets to be continuously monitored, analysed and acted upon. Investors like Curiosity VC are betting that the winners in this space will be those that turn that data into real-time, actionable intelligence for the businesses that depend on it.