Harvey, a startup constructing what it describes as an AI-powered “copilot” for attorneys, has raised $100 million in a Sequence C spherical led by GV, Google’s company enterprise arm.
The tranche, which additionally had participation from heavy-hitting angels and VCs OpenAI, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, Elad Gil and SV Angel, brings Harvey’s complete raised to $206 million and values the agency at $1.5 billion.
In a submit on Tuesday on Harvey’s official weblog, co-founders Winston Weinberg and Gabriel Pereyra mentioned that the majority of the brand new capital shall be put towards gathering and curating knowledge to construct and prepare “domain-specific” AI fashions whereas rising Harvey’s headcount and increasing its paid companies to new geographies.
“This funding will allow Harvey to proceed scaling and bettering our AI-powered expertise throughout enterprise capabilities and geographies,” Weinberg and Pereyra mentioned. “We’ll use this new capital to spend money on the engineering, knowledge and area experience which can be elementary to constructing AI-native programs that facilitate essentially the most complicated information work. We may even deepen our partnerships with each cloud and mannequin suppliers to combine extra fashions into Harvey and broaden our coaching collaborations to proceed bettering mannequin efficacy.”
Weinberg, a former securities and antitrust litigator at regulation agency O’Melveny & Myers, and Pereyra, beforehand a analysis scientist at DeepMind, Google Mind (one other of Google’s AI teams) and Meta AI, launched San Francisco-based Harvey in 2022. Weinberg and Pereyra are roommates; Pereyra confirmed Weinberg OpenAI’s GPT-3 text-generating system and Weinberg realized that it could possibly be used to enhance authorized workflows.
Harvey, powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 mannequin household, can reply authorized questions phrased in pure language, like “Inform me what the variations are between an worker and unbiased contractor within the Fourth Circuit” and “Inform me if this clause in a lease is in violation of California regulation, and if that’s the case, rewrite it so it’s now not in violation.” Harvey additionally gives instruments that may routinely extract data from trial transcripts, routinely discover authorized paperwork that may again up courtroom arguments and generate first drafts of filings that incorporate data and citations from authorized databases.
It’s highly effective stuff in concept. Nevertheless it’s additionally fraught. Given the delicate nature of most authorized disputes, some attorneys and regulation companies could be reluctant to present a instrument like Harvey entry to any case paperwork. There’s additionally the matter of language fashions’ proclivity to spout toxicity and made-up info, which might be significantly poorly acquired — if not perjurious — within the courtroom of regulation.
That’s why Harvey has a disclaimer connected to it: The instrument isn’t meant to offer authorized recommendation to nonlawyers and ought to be used beneath the supervision of licensed attorneys.
Harvey faces some competitors. Casetext makes use of AI, primarily OpenAI fashions, to search out authorized circumstances and help with common authorized analysis duties and transient drafting. Extra surgical instruments like Klarity use AI to strip drudgery from contract evaluation. At one cut-off date, startup Augrented was even exploring methods to leverage OpenAI fashions to summarize authorized notices or different sources in plain language to assist residence tenants defend their rights.
However Weinberg and Pereyra declare that Harvey is flying excessive and in use “each day” by tens of hundreds of attorneys at regulation companies and consultancies, together with Allen & Overy, Macfarlanes, Ashurst, CMS, Reed Smith and PwC. Annual recurring income has tripled since final December, the 2 co-founders mentioned within the weblog submit, whereas Harvey’s workforce has tripled in dimension.
The Data reported in early June that Harvey hoped to lift $600 million at “at the least” a $2 billion valuation, partially to accumulate a authorized analysis service referred to as vLex to coach its AI merchandise. These plans fell via — therefore the vastly lowered Sequence C.
