Legal AI startup Harvey has held preliminary discussions about a potential IPO with law firm Latham & Watkins, but has no plans to list in the near term. Valued at $15.5 billion, the company is watching how upcoming technology offerings perform before deciding whether to move ahead. A strong reception for a potential Anthropic IPO could help open the public markets to younger technology companies, with Harvey among those that might eventually consider a listing.
IPO discussions remain preliminary
People familiar with the discussions said Harvey's conversations with Latham & Watkins are at an early stage, with no imminent listing planned. Harvey declined to comment, while Latham & Watkins did not respond to inquiries. Any decision to go public will depend in part on how the technology IPO market develops.
The startup listing landscape has shifted over the past year. SpaceX completed a record-setting IPO, Anthropic could go public around the week before Thanksgiving, and OpenAI may seek a listing in early 2027. Anthropic's market reception could offer a useful gauge of investor demand for technology companies, but Harvey has not made a decision about an IPO.
Harvey reports more than $400 million in ARR
Harvey said in September that its annual recurring revenue, or ARR, had surpassed $400 million. ARR is an estimate of a company's recurring revenue over a year based on its current business scale; it is not the same as revenue already earned during a fiscal year. The figure is below Anthropic's reportedly $65 billion revenue run rate, but is comparable with the pre-IPO revenue scale of some publicly listed technology companies.
Payments company Affirm generated more than $509 million in revenue in the fiscal year before its 2020 listing. Data cloud company Snowflake reported $242 million in revenue in the first half of the year it went public, also in 2020. The comparisons put Harvey's business at a scale reached by some technology companies before successful public listings, though their business models and revenue mixes differ.
This fall, Harvey raised $550 million in a round led by Diffusion and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Participants included Goldman Sachs Alternatives, J.P. Morgan Growth Equity Partners, Coatue, and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price. The financing provided fresh capital and brought in institutional investors often seen in pre-IPO funding rounds.
Executive hires add public-company experience
Harvey added several senior executives this year. Steve Zad joined as its first chief revenue officer, after working on business development at cybersecurity company Rubrik and seeing it through its 2024 IPO. Former Google executive Keith Enright became chief strategy officer. Rachel Hepworth, who previously worked at Slack and Notion, joined as chief marketing officer, while Anique Drumright moved from Rippling to become chief product officer.
The company also promoted from within. John LaBarre, Harvey's first legal hire and a former deputy general counsel at Snowflake, became chief legal officer. Katie Burke, who helped HubSpot grow from a private company into a public one, was named chief operating officer. Alan Ghelberg has served as Harvey's chief financial officer since 2024.
Law firms and major companies drive customer base
Harvey was founded by co-founder and CEO Winston Weinberg and Gabe Pereyra, a former Google DeepMind researcher. Months before ChatGPT launched, they began exploring how large language models could power legal software that reads and drafts documents. Investors had often viewed the legal sector as relatively limited in scale and slow to adopt technology. AI has expanded what software can do with legal text, widening the potential uses for these products.
Harvey has more than 3,500 customers, including 80 of the top 100 U.S. law firms and 20% of Fortune 500 companies. Recent enterprise customers include CVS Health and Lockheed Martin. Competitor Legora raised $550 million last month at an $8.8 billion valuation, underscoring continued investor interest and intensifying fundraising competition in legal AI.
Harvey and a potential IPO adviser also have an existing business relationship. Latham & Watkins signed on last year to deploy Harvey's software across the firm, and the two are developing custom tools for the firm's fund formation practice. Since 2016, Latham & Watkins has advised on 186 offerings involving more than $101 billion in financing. Harvey's IPO discussions remain at an early stage; its revenue growth, enterprise customer base and the market for technology listings will shape whether it takes the next step.