Prison AI may no longer sound just like the sexiest class in Silicon Valley, but Harvey‘s CEO Winston Weinberg has captured the eye of just about each and every top-tier investor within the Valley. The corporate’s backers learn like a who’s who a raffle capital: the OpenAI Startup Fund (its first institutional investor), Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Elad Gil, Google Ventures, Coatue, and maximum just lately, Andreessen Horowitz.
The San Francisco-based corporate’s valuation has skyrocketed from $3 billion in February 2025 to $5 billion in June to, in overdue October, $8 billion — a upward push that displays each the bonkers numbers beings assigned to AI firms by way of their personal traders and Harvey’s talent to win over main regulation corporations and company criminal departments. If truth be told, the startup now claims 235 shoppers throughout 63 nations, together with a majority of the highest 10 U.S. regulation corporations; it additionally says it surpassed $100 million in annual ordinary income as of August.
We talked with Weinberg for this week’s StrictlyVC Obtain podcast to invite in regards to the wild experience that he and co-founder Gabe Pereyra had been on thus far. All over that chat, he shared how a chilly electronic mail despatched a couple of summers in the past to Sam Altman modified the whole lot, why he believes attorneys will get advantages slightly than be afflicted by AI (natch), and the way Harvey is tackling the technically complicated problem of establishing a in reality multiplayer platform — the place in-house attorneys can safely chat with outdoor stakeholders, as an example — that navigates moral partitions and information permissioning throughout dozens of nations.
This interview has been edited frivolously for duration. For the entire monty, take a look at the podcast.
You began as a first-year affiliate at O’Melveny & Myers. What was once the instant you discovered AI may grow to be criminal paintings?
So my co-founder was once operating at Meta on the time; he was once additionally my roommate. He was once appearing me GPT-3, and at first, I swear to God, the principle use case I had for it was once working a Dungeons and Dragons sport with buddies in LA. Then I used to be assigned to this landlord-tenant case at O’Melveny, and I didn’t know the rest about landlord-tenant regulation. I began the use of GPT-3 to paintings on it.
My co-founder Gabe and I discovered lets do chain-of-thought prompting earlier than that was once truly a factor. We created this tremendous lengthy chain-of-thought recommended over California landlord-tenant statutes. We grabbed 100 questions from r/legaladvice [on Reddit] and ran that recommended over them, then gave the question-answer pairs to a few landlord-tenant lawyers with out pronouncing the rest about AI. We simply mentioned, ‘A possible customer requested this query, right here’s the solution—would you are making any edits or would you ship this as is?’ On 86 of the 100 samples, two out of 3 lawyers or extra mentioned they’d ship it with 0 edits. That was once the instant the place we had been like, wow, this whole business will also be reworked by way of this generation.
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What came about subsequent?
We chilly emailed Sam Altman and Jason Kwon, who was once the overall recommend at OpenAI. We figured we needed to electronic mail a legal professional as a result of differently the individual wouldn’t know if the outputs had been proper. At the morning of July 4th at 10am — I bear in mind this in particular as it was once July 4th — we were given on a decision with them and more or less the remainder of the C-suite at OpenAI, and we made our pitch.
Did they write a take a look at immediately?
Yeah. It’s the OpenAI Startup Fund [they are the second-largest investor in Harvey]. OpenAI offered us to our angel traders on the time, Sarah Guo and Elad Gil, after which the whole lot else from there we had been doing ourselves. I in truth didn’t have any buddies that labored in tech. I didn’t develop up in San Francisco. I didn’t know who the highest VCs had been. I didn’t know the way you’re intended to fundraise. This was once all simply web new to me.
For any individual who wasn’t conversant in the VC scene, you’ve raised some huge cash. What enabled you to lift such a lot?
I may say one thing the VC neighborhood may no longer love, however I strongly imagine that one of the simplest ways to lift cash is to only be sure that your corporate is doing tremendous smartly. I feel there’s numerous recommendation available in the market about networking, however to me, a very powerful factor is to spend virtually all the time on your small business after which to find VCs that need to do this with you. You wish to have to search out a couple of companions that you simply assume are going to head the gap with you. 99% of your time, focal point at the trade going smartly, after which spend time looking for a couple of other folks that you simply truly assume you’ll be able to spouse with and that will probably be there for you for the longer term.
You hit $100 million in ARR in August. With round 400 workers, how shut are you to break-even?
Compute prices are dearer for us than numerous different issues. We’re working in additional than 60 nations with knowledge residency regulations in they all. For a very long time, when you used more than one fashions on your product, you had to shop for a bucket of compute — a minimal threshold — in each and every unmarried a kind of nations, even supposing you didn’t have sufficient shoppers but to make stronger that value.
Germany and Australia have extremely strict knowledge processing regulations. You can’t ship monetary knowledge outdoor of the ones nations. We’d arrange Azure or AWS cases in each and every unmarried a kind of nations, however we’d most effective use them to near 3 or 4 massive shoppers. Our margins glance excellent on a token foundation, however they’re worse as a result of we now have to spend a lot on in advance compute throughout such a lot of jurisdictions. That may get solved through the years.
Let us know about your gross sales procedure. How are you increasing globally?
At the start of this yr, about 4% of our income was once from corporates and 96% from regulation corporations. Presently, 33% of our income is from corporates, and my intestine is by way of the top of the yr, that appears nearer to 40%.
To start with, we might take public litigation briefs from Pacer, to find the spouse that wrote it, put them into Harvey, and display them how they may argue towards their very own temporary. That were given huge consideration as it was once related to what they only did.
However what was once fascinating is after we were given adoption at regulation corporations, the regulation corporations themselves would lend a hand us pitch to corporates. A company like Latham will introduce Harvey to shoppers and say, “Good day, do you know that is how we will be able to use AI to do XYZ?” So what began taking place was once regulation corporations would in truth lend a hand us promote to corporates as a result of they need to collaborate within the gadget.
You confer with this as “multiplayer.” Are you able to expound in this a a rising house of focal point?
It is a massive downside. You’ve noticed bulletins from OpenAI and Microsoft about shared threads and corporate reminiscence. That’s arduous — it’s a must to get the permissioning proper so brokers can get admission to the correct methods. However you’re most effective fixing it for one entity at a time.
The secondary downside we now have is: how do you clear up that for an organization plus all its regulation corporations? You wish to have to get the permissioning proper internally and externally. There’s an idea in criminal referred to as moral partitions. Consider a regulation company within the valley that works with 20 VCs. In case you’re operating on a deal for Sequoia but in addition operating on every other deal for Kleiner Perkins, what occurs when you by chance give the entire knowledge at the Sequoia deal to Kleiner Perkins? Large, astronomical downside. We need to clear up inside permissioning and exterior permissioning so brokers can paintings as it should be, and when you get it unsuitable, you’re going to have disastrous affects at the business.
Have you ever solved this?
It’s indubitably in procedure. We’re doing all the safety and the permissioning first. The primary model of this at scale it will likely be achieved in December. The good factor is as a result of the sort of top proportion of our buyer base are already corporates the use of Harvey, the protection downside is way more straightforward as a result of they’ve already long past thru safety assessment.
How are attorneys basically the use of Harvey lately?
On this order: Primary is drafting. Quantity two is analysis — that’s rising as a result of we simply have a partnership with LexisNexis. And the 3rd is analyze. What I imply by way of analyze is working 10 questions over 100,000 paperwork, like what you do in diligence or discovery.
To start with, we had a lot more transactional use instances — M&A and fund formation. The ones are nonetheless very talked-about, and we’re construction modules in particular for the ones issues. The world that’s rising sooner is litigation, and numerous this is since you wanted the information earlier than you might want to do it.
Some critics have mentioned Harvey is only a wrapper for ChatGPT. How do you reply?
The biggest benefit we now have through the years is 2 issues. One, we’re gathering an incredible quantity of workflow knowledge — what are the principle use instances those fashions can in truth do? Analysis turns into a lovely sturdy moat as a result of how do you evaluation the standard of a merger settlement? That turns into truly arduous. It’s important to arrange analysis frameworks and agentic methods that may self-eval the entire other steps.
The second one most powerful moat is our product is turning into very strongly multiplayer. This business has two aspects — suppliers of criminal products and services and customers. You wish to have to construct a platform that’s in between each. To this point, I haven’t noticed a competitor doing that. We’ve competition doing what we do for regulation corporations, and competition doing what we do for in-house, however I haven’t noticed any individual construct a in reality multiplayer platform.
In the case of the “ChatGPT wrapper” grievance — for 2023 and 2024, numerous the facility in the back of the product is in truth the style plus front-end paintings that makes the UI and UX more straightforward. However when you’re seeking to construct one thing the place I’ve 100,000 paperwork on this knowledge room, 5,000 emails about this M&A, a lot of these other statutes and codes, and I need a gadget the place I will be able to ask questions over all of the ones items mixed with top accuracy — that’s the holy grail. We’ve created the entire items, and what we’ve been construction for the previous couple months is pulling that in combination.
What’s your small business style?
Presently it’s most commonly seats, however we’re transferring to extra outcome-based pricing because the workflows get extra complicated. You wish to have to do each. You wish to have outcome-based pricing for extraordinarily small issues that you’ll be able to make certain have the very same degree of accuracy as a human, or higher, with very top velocity. However the fact is you’re going to need a legal professional within the loop for such a lot of labor.
For no less than the following yr or two, it’s a productiveness suite offered seat-based and multiplayer between regulation corporations and their in-house groups. Slowly through the years, we’ll construct extra consumption-based workflows because the methods recover and extra correct than people in some spaces. However it’s no longer going to be such as you automate a whole M&A — it’s going to be explicit items of diligence the place you’ll be able to have disclosure brokers automate the primary move, then have attorneys leap in and do the remainder.
You discussed to us previous that penetration is truly low in criminal. How low?
What proportion of the attorneys on Earth are the use of Harvey presently? It’s a perfect low proportion. There are 8 or 9 million attorneys on Earth. However the extra fascinating level is we’re unbelievably early innings on how complicated of labor those methods can do. They’re very useful and individuals are getting fantastic ROI, however when you take into accounts what proportion of criminal paintings can those methods do lately as opposed to what I feel it could possibly do within the subsequent 5 years — it’s such a lot decrease.
Consider the use case as, what’s the price in line with token. The criminal charges for a merger may simply be tens of tens of millions of bucks. The artifact you’ve gotten after that merger is a merger settlement and an SPA — perhaps 200 pages overall. What’s the price in line with token on that report that required $20 million or $30 million of criminal charges to generate? The ones are the varieties of use instances the place, after I say we’re at extremely low penetration, it’s that we aren’t on the level the place you’ll be able to do one thing like that. And the price of having the ability to do this as it should be is amazingly top.
What occurs to junior attorneys who’re not getting the apprenticeship they could have had previously?
I care about this probably greater than anything on the corporate as a result of I used to be a junior legal professional very just lately. The function of regulation corporations within the subsequent 5 to 10 years is: how briskly are you able to teach the most productive companions? I feel presently, that’s in part the function, however in part the function is we rent armies of work-mates and invoice them out so much. Whether or not it’s as a result of issues turn into outcome-based pricing or as a result of companions can price extra if AI methods can’t do what they do, a very powerful factor financially for a regulation company is to you’ll want to’re hiring, coaching, and growing attorneys that get to being a spouse as speedy as humanly imaginable.
If you’ll be able to construct gear that may do the primary move of an M&A, that could be a one-on-one tutor for a junior affiliate. We paintings with numerous regulation faculties. You’ll believe someday you’ve gotten an AI merger that you simply do in Harvey — the gadget’s instructing you, providing you with real-time comments. That’s an improbable coaching gadget. If you’ll be able to construct methods that may in truth do numerous the duties, there’s no reason why you couldn’t flip that into some of the very best training platforms imaginable.
Together with your valuation leaping from $3 billion to $8 billion in not up to a yr, what are your plans for long run fundraising?
Fundraising massive rounds isn’t one thing we now have deliberate anytime quickly. We don’t want that a lot cash, and we aren’t burning a loopy quantity. The explanation I did numerous fundraising this yr is there are analysis instructions which are going to require numerous compute, and we would have liked to arrange ourselves for that. In the case of public markets, that’s indubitably what we’re considering longer term. I will be able to’t provide you with the rest just about a timeline, however we’re .
