California-headquartered Harvey, an AI-powered legal tech company, has secured $100 million in Series C investment at a valuation of $1.5 billion. The round was led by GV aka Google Ventures, which recently backed Again and ClimateX with participation from OpenAI, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, Elad Gil, and SV Angel.
This round follows the recent investments in the sector such as LegalFly, Luminance, and Lawhive.
How will it use the investment?
The company will use this new capital to invest in the engineering, data, and domain expertise that are fundamental to building AI-native systems that facilitate the most complex knowledge work. Over the next 12 months, it will continue to collect and curate the data needed to build and train domain-specific models while growing its team by headcount and location to serve its global clients.
What does the company do?
Founded by Winston Weinberg and Gabriel Pereyra in 2022, Harvey powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 model family, offers a legal co-pilot to assist lawyers in tackling client issues across various practice areas, jurisdictions, and legal systems.
Similar to ChatGPT, Harvey AI processes large amounts of data and responds to a user’s natural language prompts and questions. Built on a version of ChatGPT and trained with general internet data, its specialisation in legal includes training on general legal data as well, along with public cases and law reference materials.
The company helps legal firms to make faster, more informed decisions to solve client issues and leave tedious, labour-intensive tasks to the model. Instead of performing legal research and editing legal documents manually, professionals can focus on more complex, high-value tasks.
How is it different from others?
While there are many AI-powered legal tech startups, many are known for their lack of privacy in handling sensitive information. The use of Generative AI has become a cause for concern. With the risk of third-party human reviews or sensitive client information being exposed, generative AI can bring ethical problems. However, Harvey is different as the company claims to handle data safely. It is said to follow best-in-class security practices, comprehensive security certifications, and infrastructure.
What do we think about Harvey?
The company is poised to transform the legal industry with its AI-powered legal co-pilot, significantly enhancing efficiency and accuracy in legal practice. By leveraging OpenAI’s GPT-4, Harvey enables lawyers to automate tedious tasks, allowing them to focus on complex, high-value work. Its strong commitment to data security and privacy sets it apart in a sector where these concerns are paramount.
As Harvey continues to refine its domain-specific models and expand its global presence, it is well-positioned to become a leader in legal tech innovation.
