Harvey, a leading AI-enabled legal tech startup, has just landed a huge partnership with Anthropic. Yet this new collaboration with Google represents a key inflection point in Harvey’s own journey. Harvey gained notoriety within the legal industry for its novel use of cutting edge technology. To date, it’s the most successful early-backed company from the OpenAI Startup Fund, headed up by technology visionary Sam Altman. This partnership comes at an auspicious time. Meanwhile, Harvey has recently attained decacorn status with a $3 billion valuation following a stellar $300 million Series D funding round.
Harvey was established as one of the first four startups funded by the OpenAI Startup Fund. Since then, it has grown exponentially, becoming an attractive bet for many investors, including notable firms such as Sequoia, Coatue, Kleiner Perkins and GV. The influx of capital not only underscores the confidence investors have in Harvey’s vision but positions it to expand its offerings in a rapidly evolving legal landscape.
Artificial intelligence is pretty much changing every industry right now. What makes Harvey unique Harvey sets itself apart from other competitors like DoNotPay by using multiple foundation models for various legal tasks. The startup’s recent benchmark tests showed that different AI models perform better in different areas of legal work. Harvey’s internal benchmarking showed that OpenAI’s o3 is far superior for pre-trial work. Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonnet is not far behind it in performance.
While Harvey is proud of its accomplishments, it wants to do more. It will add other high-performing reasoning foundation models from competitive vendors expressly trained for the legal market. This latest strategy focuses on creating AI agents that can automate and simplify complex workflows to increase productivity for lawyers and law clerks.
“We are incredibly fortunate to have OpenAI as an investor in Harvey and key collaborator in our product. We are energized to add to our options for customers as we continue to serve the needs of our customers globally,” stated Winston Weinberg, CEO of Harvey. It’s no surprise—maintaining its competitive edge is the name of the game for the company. It remains committed to deepening its practice areas to serve the various interests and backgrounds of its clients.
Since then Harvey has lined up support from the key players in industry and academia, raised a successful funding round. Today, it’s poised to leave a profound impact on a nascent public leaderboard that showcases model benchmark performance. Through this initiative we want to encourage and celebrate transparency and innovation within the legal tech space.
The choice to use a combination of foundation models was based on Harvey’s strong belief in their combined strength. “In less than a year, seven models (including three non-OAI models) now outperform the originally benchmarked Harvey system on BigLaw Bench,” the company announced. This evolution further underscores the quickly changing nature of AI technology and the need for flexibility in a constantly moving landscape.
Even after winning investment from Google’s corporate venture capital fund, Harvey has chosen not to go all-in on Google’s AI models right away. This prudent course of action underscores the startup’s intention to carefully consider and test the best paths forward before making the pivotal moves strategically.
Harvey is changing quickly and dramatically the competitive, legal tech environment. Its partnerships with Anthropic and Google indicate a bright future is in store. This partnership greatly advances Harvey’s technology capabilities. It further solidifies its leadership by example in terms of how we should use AI in beneficial, constructive applications in the legal space.