Harvey, a startup constructing what it describes as an AI-powered “copilot” for attorneys, has raised $100 million in a Series 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 whole raised to $206 million and values the agency at $1.5 billion.
In a put up on Tuesday on Harvey’s official weblog, co-founders Winston Weinberg and Gabriel Pereyra stated that the majority of the brand new capital will probably be put towards gathering and curating knowledge to construct and practice “domain-specific” AI fashions whereas rising Harvey’s headcount and increasing its paid providers to new geographies.
“This investment will enable Harvey to continue scaling and improving our AI-powered technology across business functions and geographies,” Weinberg and Pereyra stated. “We 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. We will also deepen our partnerships with both cloud and model providers to integrate additional models into Harvey and broaden our training collaborations to continue improving model efficacy.”
Weinberg, a former securities and antitrust litigator at legislation agency O’Melveny & Myers, and Pereyra, beforehand a analysis scientist at DeepMind, Google Brain (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-Three text-generating system and Weinberg realized that it might be used to enhance authorized workflows.
Harvey, powered by OpenAI’s GPT-Four mannequin household, can reply authorized questions phrased in pure language, like “Tell me what the differences are between an employee and independent contractor in the Fourth Circuit” and “Tell me if this clause in a lease is in violation of California law, and if so, rewrite it so it is no longer 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 information and citations from authorized databases.
It’s highly effective stuff in principle. But it’s additionally fraught. Given the delicate nature of most authorized disputes, some attorneys and legislation companies may 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 details, which might be significantly poorly obtained — if not perjurious — within the courtroom of legislation.
That’s why Harvey has a disclaimer hooked up to it: The instrument isn’t meant to offer authorized recommendation to nonlawyers and must be used underneath 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. More surgical instruments like Klarity use AI to strip drudgery from contract evaluate. At one time limit, startup Augrented was even exploring methods to leverage OpenAI fashions to summarize authorized notices or different sources in plain language to assist house tenants defend their rights.
But Weinberg and Pereyra declare that Harvey is flying excessive and in use “daily” by tens of 1000’s of attorneys at legislation 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 stated within the weblog put up, whereas Harvey’s workforce has tripled in measurement.
The Information reported in early June that Harvey hoped to boost $600 million at “at least” a $2 billion valuation, partly to amass a authorized analysis service referred to as vLex to coach its AI merchandise. Those plans fell by — therefore the vastly diminished Series…
