Generated AI shakes the traditionally slow legal world. San Francisco-based Harvey AI is one of the startups leading the allegation. The three-year-old company, which has $300 million in funding from investors including OpenAI’s startup fund, is now worth $5 billion.
The latest funding round announced yesterday (June 23) is led by Kleiner Perkins and Coatue Management. In addition to OpenAI’s startup fund, venture capital firms such as Sequoia Capital, GV and DST Global also attended the conference. This is the valuation of Harvey at $3 billion after another $300 million increase in February.
Founded in 2022, Harvey has developed AI-driven tools for law firms and corporate legal departments to simplify repetitive tasks and increase efficiency. The company currently serves 337 legal customers in 53 countries and plans to continue to expand to major international markets. “It is most important for us to fuel global growth,” Harvey’s chief people official Katie Burke told Observer. She noted that the traction in the UK, Australia and India is strong.
Currently, Harvey’s focus remains on the legal department, with top clients such as Paul, Weiss and A&O Shearman using the platform to shift it from administrative work to more strategic tasks. However, Harvey also focuses on the wider footprint of the entire professional services, including mergers and acquisitions and tax accounting, which has been reflected in the work of an in-house legal team with companies like PwC. “The best way to think is: first step, law; long-term, broader professional services,” Burke said.
As the legal industry includes generated AI, instances of hallucinations (systems generate inaccurate or fabricated information) proliferate throughout court cases. Harvey solves this with a dual strategy: engineering and training customers to “trust but validate”. “Part of the reason we are doing is teaching our customers how to think about responsible AI usage,” Burke said.
Harvey faces competition from more established legal technicians such as Ironclad and Clio, worth more than $3 billion. Burke believes that Harvey’s strengths lie in its high level of customization and a strong emphasis on enterprise-level trust and security. As part of the strategy, the company today released a new workflow builder that enables companies to create tailored AI agents that fit into specific legal workflows.
The latest funding will also support team growth. Harvey currently has more than 340 employees and recently added two senior executives: Siva Gurumurthy, former chief technology officer Siva Gurumurthy and Stripe Alum’s John Haddock as chief business officers.
