Chariot Secures $10M to Combat Hidden Fees and Subscriptions

While assisting another founder in creating an application that compiled data regarding class-action settlements, Zim Hang came to understand how difficult it can be for everyday people to seek restitution from corporations they feel have mistreated them.

He additionally learned about mass arbitration, an alternative method for pursuing individual legal actions when corporate contracts prohibit customers from participating in class actions. Simultaneously, he recognized that a relatively small number of law firms possessed the infrastructure to handle thousands of such claims concurrently.

That exact gap served as the foundation for Chariot Claims, which successfully secured $10 million in a Series A funding round led by Silverton Partners. The financing aims to assist consumers in pursuing claims related to suspected privacy breaches, concealed charges, and subscriptions that present significant hurdles to cancel. Additional participants in the funding round included Indicator Ventures, Lightbank, Neon Fund, ZVC, Rosecliff Ventures, Alumni Ventures, FJ Labs, Graph Ventures, and Vermilion Ventures.

Operating out of New York, the startup collaborates with law firms to pinpoint prospective cases, locate impacted consumers, and collect the data required to pursue financial recovery. This latest financial injection elevates the company’s total funding to $15.7 million, a figure that encompasses a $3.6 million seed investment secured in April 2025 alongside an earlier pre-seed round.

Chariot’s newest funding arrives amid a broader boom in legal technology investments. Funding directed toward the legal tech sector reached an all-time high in the previous year, drawing $4.6 billion according to Crunchbase figures. Throughout the current year, legal technology startups have already accumulated over $3 billion, positioning the sector on track to match or surpass the totals from 2025.

The operational workflow at Chariot functions as follows: For every individual case, consumers fill out an intake form that evaluates preliminary eligibility instantly. Chariot’s internal team then validates these pre-screened claims using a multi-tiered combination of technology and human supervision before forwarding them to the cooperating law firm managing the litigation. Hang, who serves as the company’s CEO, shared with Crunchbase News that Chariot generally processes upwards of 200,000 claim entries each month and has taken on approximately 80 cases since transitioning to its active business model slightly over a year ago.

The enterprise maintains a workforce of roughly 15 employees and currently operates at a break-even point, according to Hang. Leadership intends to allocate the fresh capital primarily toward recruitment and product enhancement, which includes developing artificial intelligence systems designed to evaluate cases and help verify consumer eligibility.

A gap in consumer legal services

Chariot represents the third startup founded by Hang. His initial venture stemmed from sleep investigations he conducted while pursuing studies in psychology and neuroscience at Washington University. He translated those findings into a smart-pillow enterprise and eventually divested its intellectual property to a medical-device company. Afterward, he worked across healthcare technology and fintech, established a Web3 enterprise, and subsequently transitioned into the legal technology sector.

Across all of those distinct fields, he noted that he encountered intricate frameworks where the motivations of corporations and their clientele did not always align. His tenure aiding the class-action settlement startup brought those concerns directly into focus.

He recounted feeling “frustrated and mystified and horrified by how our justice system works.”

Chariot was launched roughly three years ago, pivoting to its present operational model after Hang identified an opportunity to assist legal practices with mass arbitration management. Traditional firms accustomed to handling class-action lawsuits can find themselves overwhelmed by the administrative demands of coordinating massive volumes of distinct claimants, he explained.

“It’s just really inefficient for them to try to build workflows around 10,000 claimants or 100,000 claimants,” Hang stated.

Chariot manages segments of that logistical burden, whereas its partner firms oversee the actual legal grievances. The startup bills the firms via flat service charges, while the law firms operate on a contingency fee structure. Hang underscores that because Chariot is not structured as a law firm, the enterprise itself never files legal claims.

The company aids consumers in pursuing a diverse range of grievances. Examples encompass accusations that digital platforms or software tracked user data without explicit consent, that corporations appended unexpected fees during the payment checkout process, or that enterprises designed subscription models to be effortless to initiate yet exceptionally arduous to terminate.

Finding evidence and drawing objections

Chariot begins its operations by searching for potential disputes involving privacy breaches, concealed charges, and alternative consumer complaints. Its proprietary software scans public databases, such as federal court records, utilizing artificial intelligence to analyze the allegations and compile preliminary research for collaborating law firms.

Such preparation entails drafting legal memos grounded in publicly filed complaints. Furthermore, Chariot is actively engineering tools capable of monitoring shifts in legislation and judicial rulings that might influence whether a specific legal action can move forward. This initiative remains in its infancy, with the ultimate objective of automating a significant portion of the legwork traditionally assigned to associates and paralegals, as noted by Hang.

The startup evaluates several hundred prospective cases monthly, he mentioned. It runs test advertisements for approximately 30 potential disputes to measure whether it can successfully source consumers who hold a valid claim, subsequently selecting about 10 to pursue more thoroughly alongside partner law firms. Each individual case can encompass numerous individual consumers, whom Chariot reaches via digital advertising and strategic alliances with consumer financial technology entities.

To establish whether a valid grievance exists, consumers must supply specific data to assist with the evaluation. For instance, in the event of a corporate data breach, this might involve an official notice from the organization confirming that private details were compromised. For a hidden-fee dispute, necessary details could include the item purchased, the date of purchase, and the total amount disbursed.

Chariot is currently developing AI-driven solutions to assist in reviewing this supporting documentation and verifying whether a consumer qualifies for a claim, according to Hang. The required evidence, alongside the complexity of verifying it, fluctuates depending on the nature of the alleged infraction.

The startup aims to streamline this verification phase by permitting users to link their email accounts, enabling its software to autonomously scan for relevant communications rather than compelling consumers to manually complete digital forms. Hang projects that such technological upgrades could empower the enterprise to scale its handling capacity to between 10 and 100 times its current claim volume.

Companies push back

Not everyone welcomes Chariot’s strategic framework. Marketing campaigns intended to surface potential claimants have provoked intense pushback from several targeted corporations. In reality, Chariot has encountered cease-and-desist documentation disputing, among other things, its utilization of corporate titles and trademarks within promotional advertisements, Hang pointed out.

Nevertheless, he maintains that explicitly identifying these commercial entities remains essential to reach individuals who utilized their goods or services.

“As a part of our business, we need to mention the name of the company that has this alleged violation,” he explained.

Chariot reviews these legal notices alongside its legal counsel and honors demands it deems legitimate, stated Hang. He declined to disclose the names of specific corporate entities for the purposes of this report.

His overarching objective is to drive up the financial consequences for businesses engaging in alleged consumer abuses. If a larger volume of impacted patrons demand compensation, he reasons, corporations will confront a more substantial financial incentive to alter those questionable business practices.

“We want to make unethical unprofitable,” he stated.

Mike Dodd, general partner at Silverton, expressed via email to Crunchbase News that his fund was drawn to Chariot’s vertical AI strategy for partnering with legal practices, which he characterized as “exciting and defensible.”

“It’s a greenfield market with space to expand horizontally and eventually into a generalized consumer legal AI solution,” he wrote. His firm was additionally attracted to what Dodd described as “a business model that aligns capitalistic incentives with access to justice.”

“When a company breaks the law and breaks what it promises to its consumers, the consumer rarely seeks justice,” he noted. “Chariot has built the technology to make individual consumer claims work at scale, and the team to operate it in a category where execution is genuinely hard.”

Related Crunchbase query:

• Global Legal And Legal Tech Startup Funding In 2026
• Global Venture Funding To AI Startups In 2026

Illustration: Dom Guzman

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Chariot Claims?

Chariot Claims is a New York-based legal tech startup that helps consumers pursue claims regarding privacy violations, hidden fees, and difficult-to-cancel subscriptions by partnering with law firms to manage large-scale mass arbitrations.

How much funding has Chariot raised?

The company has raised a total of $15.7 million, which includes a recent $10 million Series A funding round led by Silverton Partners, a $3.6 million seed investment in April 2025, and an earlier pre-seed round.

Does Chariot file legal claims directly on behalf of consumers?

No. Chariot is not a law firm and does not file claims itself. Instead, it helps consumers and partner law firms by gathering information, screening claims, and managing administrative workloads.

What types of claims does Chariot handle?

Chariot assists with claims involving unauthorized data tracking by websites or apps, unexpected fees added during checkout, and subscriptions that are easy to start but difficult to cancel.

How do companies react to Chariot’s business model?

Some targeted companies have pushed back against Chariot’s advertising efforts, issuing cease-and-desist letters over the use of company names and trademarks in ads, though Chariot reviews these letters with legal counsel and complies with valid demands.

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