Bringing World-Class CLM to a Japanese Market with Under 2% Penetration — The Disruptive Innovation Vertex Ventures SEA & India Identified in Hubble’s “Structure”

In October 2025, Hubble Inc. (hereinafter referred to as “the Company”) successfully completed the final close of its Series B funding round. We are proud to announce that Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India (Vertex Ventures SEAI) — a prominent global venture capital firm backed by Temasek, the Singapore government’s investment company — has joined as a new lead investor.

https://hubble-docs.com/news/series-b-final-close

While Vertex Ventures SEAI has a robust track record in high-growth markets such as India, Southeast Asia, and the U.S., Hubble marks only their second-ever investment in Japan. Notably, Hubble is their first-ever investment in the Japanese Legal Tech and CLM (Contract Lifecycle Management) sector.

Why did a firm with a global vantage point on the CLM market choose Hubble as its inaugural Legal Tech investment in Japan? The answer lies in Hubble’s product philosophy—which precisely captures the unique corporate decision-making structures of Japanese enterprises—and the firm recognition of growth potential latent in Japan’s current low CLM penetration rate.

To mark this milestone, we welcomed Nikhil Marwaha, Partner at Vertex Ventures SEAI, to Japan for a dialogue with our executive team: Shimpei Hayakawa (CEO), Katsuya Fujii (CTO), and Tomoya Sakai (CLO). In this discussion, they explored the specificities of Japanese contract practices from a global investor's perspective and the future of "AI-Human Collaboration" envisioned by our contract AI agent, "Contract Flow Agent (CFA)."

Why Hubble? Assessing the Penetration Gap and Product Comprehensiveness

Nikhil Marwaha, Partner at Vertex Ventures SEAI

**— Why did Vertex Ventures SEAI decide to invest in the Japanese Legal Tech market and choose Hubble as your partner?

Marwaha:** We have closely monitored the CLM markets in India, Southeast Asia, and the U.S. In the U.S., SaaS adoption among enterprises is at 75–80%, whereas Japan remains at 30–40%. In other words, overall SaaS penetration in Japan is roughly half of the global standard. Furthermore, in the CLM sector specifically, penetration in Japan is under 2%. This gap indicates immense room for the market to expand.

Legal work involves many repetitive tasks. Combined with the macro trends of Japan’s shrinking labor force and the global rise of AI, providing Legal Tech solutions that automate these processes offers significant efficiency and benefits to Japanese clients.

Hayakawa: Nikhil and his team always share the latest insights into global CLM trends. Every meeting reminds us of the "margin for growth" that we might miss if we only looked within Japan. This has been a powerful stimulus for us.

Marwaha: There are three main reasons we were convinced to invest in Hubble. First is the "comprehensiveness" of the product. Many tools in the market specialize in single functions like e-signatures or reviews. Hubble, however, is designed for end-to-end orchestration, managing the entire contract lifecycle—from drafting and review to approval, execution, and management—within a single product.

Second is the "AI Roadmap." Hubble’s vision for integrating AI into product development is exceptionally effective for CLM.
Third is the "Team." Visions are executed by people, and we believe the leadership of Hayakawa-san, Fujii-san, and Sakai-san is of the highest caliber, even when compared to the CLM environments we invest in across India and the U.S.

Hayakawa: Thank you. Having our team's strength validated by a global firm like Vertex Ventures SEAI gives us great confidence. It reaffirms that the challenges we are solving in this unique Japanese market are worth tackling on a global scale.

Structuring the "Friction of Decision-Making" Unique to Japanese Enterprises

Tomoya Sakai, CLO

**— Given this global perspective, Sakai-san, as a legal expert, how do you feel Hubble’s development philosophy has been received?

Sakai:** During the due diligence process, I was struck by Nikhil’s strong interest in how Japanese contract practices differ from those overseas.

Japanese contract workflows are built upon "inefficient decision-making structures" involving complex processes and numerous stakeholders. People often ask, "Can’t general-purpose AIs like ChatGPT or Gemini write and review contracts?" But the essence of legal practice goes beyond that.

— You mean there are areas that general AI cannot replace?

Sakai: Exactly. General AI excels at analyzing and understanding the text of a contract. However, in actual business activities, the most critical factor is the context outside the text: "What has changed with this specific partner in the past?" or "What risks were taken and what was permitted?"

This information does not appear in the clauses themselves. Our system design, which structurally accumulates the entire decision-making process including this underlying context, is Hubble’s core strength. This creates a high barrier to entry that prevents global Big Tech from easily taking market share in Japan.

Marwaha: That is precisely why we value Hubble’s approach. Hubble doesn't just support micro-processes with AI; it takes a holistic "Workflow + AI" approach.

Additionally, while many Legal Tech products focus solely on the legal department, Hubble allows for "cross-departmental deployment" involving marketing, sales, and finance. It serves as a foundation for accelerating the decision-making speed of the entire enterprise.

Sakai: In Japan, legal literacy among business professionals is not always high. Consequently, the structure has historically been "only the legal department can read the documents," concentrating all decision-making there and slowing everything down.

Hubble aims to support the decision-making of everyone involved in a contract via AI. By eliminating the "friction" of consultation costs and internal coordination, we provide an environment where business units can make the fastest decisions themselves, thereby enhancing the international competitiveness of Japanese companies.

Redefining "Contract DX" in the AI Era

Shimpei Hayakawa, CEO

**— As AI evolves, the nature of Legal Tech is changing. How does Hubble view this era?

Hayakawa:** Traditionally, Legal Tech was a tool to make the work of legal departments or lawyers more efficient. But we are aiming for more than just "convenience." By utilizing AI as a new labor force, we want to eradicate the very tasks we once took for granted and the wait times inherent in team coordination. This is our redefinition of "Contract DX."

Marwaha: From Vertex’s view, legal is one of the areas where AI will cause the fastest disruption. Tasks are complex yet often structured and repetitive. We especially appreciate Hubble's design philosophy of "Workflow + AI." Rather than a siloed approach to automating specific processes, they embed AI into the orchestration of the entire operation.

Hayakawa: That is the core of our philosophy. With AI, even business department staff who lack specialized legal literacy can make autonomous decisions. Instead of delegating everything to legal, the front lines can act with their own sense of speed. This will dramatically accelerate the overall decision-making of Japanese companies.

Marwaha: What’s interesting is that even as AI proliferates, the "final decision and responsibility" remain with humans. AI becomes a support system that enables people to make more efficient and accurate judgments.

Some argue "SaaS is dead," but I disagree. Companies like Hubble that own the workflow and integrate AI appropriately will become incredibly valuable in the long run. When AI achieves a level of speed and accuracy comparable to AI-native companies, the value of firms like Hubble—which have solved "Workflow Orchestration"—will only increase.

Hayakawa: Thank you. Ultimately, our mission is to build a new infrastructure where people say, "We can't conduct contract business without Hubble." By embedding AI not just as a tool, but as a "flow" that supports human understanding and judgment, we want to transform contract work into a smooth process, free from the burden of mundane tasks.

The Next Phase of Growth: Co-Creation with Global Insights

Right: Katsuya Fujii, CTO

— Following the Series B milestone, what challenges lie ahead for Hubble?

Fujii: As CTO, the most exciting part of this co-creation with Vertex Ventures SEAI is the trigger to globalize our development structure. Given Japan’s shrinking labor force, securing development resources is an unavoidable challenge.

As Hubble steps toward global markets, it is invaluable for our dev team to experience foreign cultures and talent pools early on. This partnership allows us to accelerate a process that was inevitable.

Marwaha: Supporting the establishment of overseas development bases is something we can specifically help with. Leveraging global talent—much like Google or Microsoft do in India—will help Hubble grow more cost-effectively and rapidly. We intend to use our network to the fullest to help Hubble build the optimal model.

Hayakawa: Beyond development, we want to incorporate global insights into sales and customer success efficiency.

Marwaha: Exactly. In our experience, scaling further requires relentless "Customer Obsession" and the discipline of efficient growth. Continuously reflecting the customer's voice into the product and refining a "sticky" experience is what supports healthy growth.

Fujii: Being able to "co-create" as equals with a global VC like Vertex is a massive step forward. We will allocate resources to international collaboration and update our organizational foundations to global standards while focusing on the domestic market.

Hayakawa: 2026 will be a year of even greater evolution. We want to build a product that business departments are passionate about—one they wouldn’t want to do contract work without. With this partnership as our tailwind, we will accelerate beyond "Contract DX" into a new standard of business infrastructure.

2026: Toward a New Standard for Contract Operations

— Finally, through this powerful partnership, what is the ultimate "future of contract operations" that Hubble aims to realize?
**
Hayakawa:** 2026 will be the definitive year for Hubble to establish "Contract DX" as infrastructure. Our goal is to create an experience where business departments say, "I can't imagine the world before Hubble."

While we have previously focused on the comfort of legal departments, we will now eliminate the "waiting time" and "tedious coordination" of the front lines by combining AI and workflow. We want to create a world where personnel can be passionate about their original creative work. We aim to realize this through the power of this global partnership.

Marwaha: We sincerely look forward to running alongside Hubble on this journey to transform Japanese legal practice and reach new heights.

（Interviews conducted: January 2026 / Editing & Text by Hubble Brand Communication / Photo by Wataru Kitao）

Company Overview

Hubble Inc. is driven by the purpose: “Solving real-world challenges through technology to create a future where individuality and creativity in the workplace can thrive.” The company provides and operates the following services: Contract management cloud service Hubble https://hubble-docs.com Hubble mini: a cloud service that builds a contract database from executed agreements using AI https://hubble-docs.com/lp/Hubble-mini/ OneNDA: a consortium-based NDA execution platform aimed at standardizing NDA practices https://one-contract.com/ Legal Ops Lab: a media platform to enhance legal productivity https://hubble-docs.com/legal-ops-lab/ As of October 2025, the Hubble suite is used by more than 700 companies, ranging from listed corporations to startups across industries.

Headquarters: 7F Shibuya Property Tower, 1-32-12 Higashi, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0011, Japan

Executives: Shimpei Hayakawa (CEO) / Katsuya Fujii (CTO) / Tomoya Sakai (CLO, Attorney-at-Law)

Company page: https://hubble-docs.com/about

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