Harvey raises $300M to scale legal AI
Harvey, the fast-growing legal tech startup pioneering AI solutions for the legal industry, has announced a $300 million Series E funding round, bringing its valuation to a staggering $5 billion. The round was co-led by Kleiner Perkins and Coatue, with participation from a powerhouse list of backers including Sequoia, GV, DST Global, OpenAI Startup Fund, Elemental, SV Angel, and REV, the venture capital arm of LexisNexis owner RELX Group.
Founded just three years ago, Harvey has emerged as the dominant force in the nascent but highly competitive field of AI for lawyers. With over 340 employees and clients across 53 countries, the company counts prestigious law firms such as Paul, Weiss and in-house legal departments at corporations like KKR and PwC among its 337 customers. The company’s software, built on top of models from OpenAI, Anthropic (Claude), and others, is tailored specifically for legal workflows and firm-specific documents, promising to deliver security and privacy that meets the rigorous demands of the legal profession.
Harvey CEO and cofounder Winston Weinberg, himself a lawyer, emphasized the necessity of raising such a large round to support the company’s rapid expansion. “If you expand as quickly as we are, you just need to do raises like this,” he said. With the new funding, Harvey plans to double its headcount and move beyond law, pushing into adjacent professional service sectors like tax accounting.
A recent visit to Harvey’s upscale headquarters on Park Avenue in New York showcased a workplace filled with lawyers — in the kitchen, on ergonomic chairs, even smiling and waving. While only 18% of Harvey’s staff are lawyers, Weinberg sees this legal muscle as essential to Harvey’s mission of deeply integrating with the legal profession. “We want to partner with the industry,” he said — not replace it.
That strategy appears to be paying off. Unlike earlier generations of legal AI startups that struggled to gain traction, Harvey’s customer base and investor confidence suggest it’s found a winning formula. “It sets the blueprint for how a vertical AI enterprise company can build and execute,” said Kleiner Perkins partner Ilya Fushman, who also co-led Harvey’s earlier Series B and C rounds.
The company’s rise comes at a time when the legal services market — valued at roughly $1 trillion — is seeing growing interest from AI players. Rivals like Ironclad and Clio have also raised significant funding at multibillion-dollar valuations. But Harvey’s $5 billion price tag now sets the high-water mark for the sector.
One of Harvey’s key innovations is its ability to customize large language models using proprietary client data, without compromising privacy. More than 10% of the company’s workforce focuses on security, and Harvey claims to undergo regular third-party testing to maintain industry-standard protections.
The AI’s impact on legal efficiency is already being felt. Juan Pablo Sandoval Celis, a lawyer and MBA who works on Harvey’s business development team, reports clients are using the tool to reduce legal tasks from weeks to minutes. But this speed could also pose a challenge to the traditional law firm business model, which often relies on billable hours.
Weinberg, however, believes that AI will not shrink legal jobs but reshape them. “I think it’ll get to a certain point where you aren’t able to compete—or able to support large corporations—unless you are using tools like this,” he said. Fixed-fee arrangements are already becoming more common, and Weinberg expects AI adoption to ultimately expand the scope and scale of legal work.
As Harvey eyes global expansion and diversification into new professional domains, its latest round gives it ample runway — and signals that AI’s transformation of the legal industry is not just hype, but an accelerating reality.
