Harvey AI Came Out of Nowhere and Took Over Legal Tech

If there was one startup that was known for creating a FOMO among investors and especially in the legal sector that was Harvey. Just a few years ago, Harvey was an unknown entity in both the legal and AI worlds. Founded in 2022 by Winston Weinberg, a junior associate at O’Melveny, and Gabe Pereyra, a former DeepMind and Meta researcher, Harvey did not emerge from a well-known legal tech incubator or a major law firm’s innovation arm. Instead, it was an upstart, leveraging OpenAI’s GPT-3 technology to explore how AI could be applied to legal workflows.

The startup’s early days were marked by quiet experimentation. Weinberg and Pereyra initially tested their legal chatbot by pulling questions from Reddit. They then sent their prototype to OpenAI’s general counsel, understanding that a lawyer would best be able to judge the tool’s potential. This move led to a pivotal meeting with OpenAI’s leadership on July 4, 2022, and soon after, Harvey became one of the first recipients of investment from the OpenAI Startup Fund.

Despite this early validation, Harvey remained largely under the radar. Even within legal tech circles, few had heard of the company, and skepticism toward AI in legal practice was widespread. The perception of AI tools as unreliable, coupled with concerns about confidentiality and ethical risks, meant that Harvey had an uphill battle ahead.

Allen & Overy’s Adoption

Harvey’s first major breakthrough came in early 2023 when Allen & Overy, one of the world’s largest law firms, announced it was rolling out the tool to its 3,500 attorneys. This was a watershed moment. Until then, AI adoption in major law firms had been slow, with many viewing these tools as either too risky or too simplistic for complex legal work. Harvey’s ability to land such a significant client signaled that law firms were starting to take AI seriously.

Following Allen & Overy’s adoption, Harvey’s momentum accelerated. More AmLaw 100 firms began to take notice, and by 2024, the startup had expanded its client base from 40 firms to 235 across 42 countries. The company’s rapid expansion placed it squarely at the center of discussions about AI’s impact on the legal industry.

Harvey is not the only player in legal AI, but it has managed to stand out in an increasingly competitive market. Other AI-driven legal tools—such as Casetext (acquired by Thomson Reuters), Andreessen Horowitz-backed Eve, Spellbook, Robin AI, and Lex Machina (owned by LexisNexis)—all compete in this space. However, Harvey has distinguished itself by focusing on hiring lawyers as domain experts and integrating them deeply into its product development.

“We have tons of lawyers on staff designing and evaluating the product, and they’re all from large law firms or from large in-house teams,” Weinberg explained. “They’re literally telling our engineers, ‘We need to do that section and that section,’ walking them through how different legal work products are actually created.”

By embedding legal experts directly into its AI development process, Harvey has worked to ensure that its product delivers outputs that align with how lawyers actually think and work. This has helped the company overcome some of the biggest criticisms of AI in legal—namely, that a chatbot or contract analysis tool lacks the necessary contextual awareness to be useful in high-stakes legal matters.

The $300 Million Bet and What Comes Next

Harvey’s $300 million Series D funding round, led by Sequoia Capital, has solidified its position as a leader in legal AI. The round also included investments from Coatue, Kleiner Perkins, OpenAI Startup Fund, GV, Conviction, Elad Gil, and REV (the venture arm of RELX Group, which owns LexisNexis). The valuation, now at $3 billion, is a dramatic increase from its previous round just months earlier.

This influx of capital raises critical questions about Harvey’s future. How will it deploy these funds? Weinberg has stated that the investment will be used to continue improving the platform, scaling agentic workflows, expanding enterprise use cases, and growing the team. But at this level of funding, expectations are enormous.

One significant move was Harvey’s partnership with Icertis, a major player in contract lifecycle management (CLM). This expansion into the CLM space signals that Harvey is not just targeting law firms, but also in-house legal departments, corporate legal operations, and other professional service firms. The company has also been aggressively hiring, offering salaries that have reportedly shaken up the legal tech job market.

The Skepticism and the Reality Check

Harvey’s meteoric rise has not been without pushback. Many industry insiders initially dismissed it as just another “GPT-wrapper,” arguing that its reliance on OpenAI’s models meant it lacked true innovation. Others have expressed concerns about its sustainability, questioning whether its rapid expansion is built on solid foundations or simply the result of aggressive marketing and sales.

Despite this skepticism, Harvey’s numbers tell a compelling story. In 2024, its annual recurring revenue (ARR) grew fourfold, reaching $50 million, with projections to exceed $100 million within eight months. Such rapid revenue growth is rare in legal tech, where adoption cycles tend to be slow and conservative.

Still, one of the biggest unknowns remains Harvey’s long-term exit strategy. With a $3 billion valuation, an IPO seems like a likely endpoint, but in an industry where acquisitions are more common than public offerings, who could acquire Harvey at such a high price? Even LexisNexis’ parent company, RELX, has invested in Harvey despite already having its own suite of AI tools. This raises intriguing questions about the competitive dynamics at play.

What is clear is that Harvey is not fading into obscurity—it is doing the opposite. With substantial funding in hand, an aggressive expansion strategy, and a growing customer base across multiple segments, Harvey is poised to shape the future of legal AI. Whether it maintains its current trajectory or faces turbulence in the coming years, one thing is certain: it is no longer an unknown entity.

For a startup that began with two founders testing GPT-3 on Reddit legal questions, Harvey has come a long way. The legal industry, once seen as resistant to AI disruption, is now adopting these tools at a remarkable pace. And as Weinberg himself has noted, the pace of change will only accelerate in 2025.

The legal world may not have expected Harvey, but it now has no choice but to deal with it.