Intapp launches Celeste AI coworker for professional firms

Intapp has launched Celeste for general use. The product is aimed at professional firms in regulated sectors.

Intapp describes Celeste as an AI coworker built to handle firm-level business processes rather than individual drafting or research tasks. The system is built around a firm's own data, internal methods and compliance rules.

Celeste is designed for work that sits behind fee-earning activity, including deal screening, conflicts clearance, business development and lateral hiring. The software can operate across workflows in law, private capital, investment banking, accounting and consulting.

The launch reflects a growing divide in the market between AI tools used by individual staff and those intended to support operational decision-making across an entire firm. Intapp is positioning Celeste in what it calls "Firm AI", a category focused on the business systems and governance structures of professional services organisations.

According to Intapp, Celeste uses playbooks to encode internal processes into multi-step workflows. Those playbooks cover areas such as origination, intake, pricing, fundraising and conflicts, and firms can also build their own through a no-code tool.

Its design is closely tied to existing systems of record. Celeste integrates with a firm's internal platforms, ingests documents and connects with external data providers through open connectors, with controls intended to reflect ethical walls, need-to-know restrictions and audit requirements.

Early users

Two early adopters named by Intapp are BakerHostetler and Hg. Their use cases point to the operational areas where firms are looking to apply AI beyond document production.

In legal work, Celeste can bring together relevant matters, partner experience and prior pitch materials for urgent client requests. It can also manage an end-to-end lateral hiring process, from candidate research and conflicts pre-screening to clearance preparation and onboarding.

For private capital firms, the software can turn a confidential information memorandum into a structured investment screen using a firm's own investment criteria, mandate and deal history. In investment banking, it can map board and management relationships to help identify routes into a mandate.

Katherine Lowry, Chief Information Officer and Head of IncuBaker at BakerHostetler, outlined where the firm expects to use the product first.

"Our immediate focus is on conflicts and intake, because that's where Celeste will have the biggest impact on our operations. Clearing conflicts faster to win engagements - and going through clearance at a much faster rate when bringing in laterals with thousands of matters - will make a real difference for our teams. What drew us to Intapp was the shared alignment on process and on governance," Lowry said.

At Hg, the emphasis is on applying the firm's investment expertise to screening and pipeline tracking.

"The intelligence is ours, not something generic applied to our firm. Celeste screens against our actual mandate, drawing on knowledge we have built across the firm over two decades. Having a clear, always-current view of deal progress and pipeline speed - without the usual reporting lift - is genuinely valuable to any deal team," Shirin Veeran, Data, Tech & AI Strategy, Hg said.

Market position

Intapp argues that many current AI products improve the speed of individual tasks but do less to change how firms run critical business functions. In sectors such as law and private capital, those functions often depend on internal precedents, relationship histories and strict controls over confidential information.

That means the challenge is not only language processing or search, but whether software can follow firm-specific rules and produce a full record of the actions taken. Intapp says Celeste applies the same restrictions to AI activity as those used for people, including ethical barriers and access controls.

Thad Jampol, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Intapp, set out the company's view of how firms will divide AI usage.

"Firms will run several kinds of AI: horizontal assistants for everyday work, practice AI for the work product, and Firm AI for the business of the firm itself. That last category is the hard one, and it's the one almost nobody is building. That's Celeste - an expert AI coworker built on a firm's own playbooks, knowledge, and guardrails. When a conflicts team can clear 10 times the matters and a fund can screen 10 times the deals, that's not saved time - that's a new business model," Jampol said.

Intapp has built software for professional firms for two decades, with products focused on compliance, conflicts, intake, deal and relationship management. Celeste extends that position by tying generative AI and workflow automation to the underlying systems already used by firms in regulated industries.

The product is now available for firms seeking to apply AI to operational processes where governance, client confidentiality, and internal know-how are central requirements.