San Francisco-based legal tech startup Harvey.ai has raised $80 million in a Series B funding round that values the company at $715 million, marking substantial growth since its last financing in April.
The round was co-led by prominent VC investor Elad Gil and Kleiner Perkins, with participation from OpenAI's Startup Fund and Sequoia Capital. This brings Harvey’s total funding to date to over $100 million.
Founded in 2022 by former Meta AI researcher Gabriel Pereyra and ex-O’Melveny & Myers lawyer Winston Weinberg, Harvey leverages advanced natural language processing to streamline legal workflows. The platform automates labor-intensive tasks like contract review and document rewrites, allowing lawyers to work more efficiently.
Over the past year, Harvey has quickly gained traction among leading law firms and Fortune 500 legal departments. It has built domain-specific AI models in collaboration with OpenAI to address complex client needs. Additionally, its commitment to client confidentiality, including anonymizing and deleting client data, has been crucial in winning over legal clients concerned about privacy.
The company has also managed to grow revenue exponentially despite broader startup funding challenges. Harvey’s annual recurring revenue has climbed 10x since April to around $10 million. Its last funding round in April valued the firm at $150 million.
"We are grateful to our existing investors for their ongoing commitment and support, and look forward to working closely with Kleiner Perkins to scale our team and product suite,” said co-founder Gabriel Pereyra.
The new capital will be used to expand Harvey’s engineering team and accelerate development of its SaaS platform. This will likely include new features for customized model building to meet nuanced client requirements.
The legal AI market is becoming increasingly competitive, with firms like EvenUp and Darrow making significant inroads. However, Harvey.ai's unique approach and rapid growth set it apart. Their funding round also comes at the end of a year that saw several major M&A deals in the legal AI space, including Thomson Reuters’ $650 million acquisition of Casetext.
While some AI startups have struggled recently, Harvey’s ability to demonstrate real revenue traction with blue-chip customers has made it stand out. Its emphasis on customization and data privacy has also inspired confidence among legal users.
The new round and lofty valuation will go a far way in helping to cement Harvey’s position as a leader in using AI to transform legal services. With prominent investors and customers now backing its vision, the startup seems poised to continue disrupting the $300B legal market.