Legal AI startup Harvey has had preliminary conversations with lawyers at Latham & Watkins about a potential initial public offering, though people familiar with the matter say no listing is imminent. Harvey also announced a $550 million funding round that pushed its valuation to $15.5 billion, cementing its place among the most closely watched startups riding the generative AI boom into the legal industry.
According to Business Insider, which cited two people familiar with the matter, the discussions were preliminary, with no listing imminent. A source familiar with the matter told the outlet that Harvey is likely to watch how the coming crop of tech listings fare before deciding whether to move ahead. Harvey declined to comment on the reported talks, and Latham & Watkins did not respond to a request for comment, Business Insider reported.
A Fresh $550 Million War Chest
The IPO chatter follows an announcement from Harvey that it had closed a $550 million funding round co-led by Diffusion and Lightspeed Venture Partners, lifting its valuation to $15.5 billion. The company said in September that it had crossed $400 million in annual recurring revenue, a milestone that underscores how quickly its software for reading and drafting legal documents has caught on inside law firms and corporate legal departments. The company's backers include Goldman Sachs Alternatives, J.P. Morgan's growth equity arm, Coatue, and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price.
Business Insider reported that Harvey now has more than 3,500 customers. Its client roster is striking for a company built on technology that barely existed in its current form a few years ago — Business Insider reports that Harvey's customers include 80% of the top 100 U.S. law firms and 20% of the Fortune 500, with enterprise clients such as CVS Health and Lockheed Martin.
Built By a DeepMind Researcher and a Lawyer
Harvey was co-founded by Winston Weinberg and Gabe Pereyra, a former Google DeepMind researcher, who began using large language models in 2022 to build software capable of reading and writing legal documents, per Business Insider's reporting. The company has since assembled an executive bench stacked with IPO experience: it hired Steve Zad as its first chief revenue officer, a leader who previously helped steer data-security company Rubrik through its 2024 public offering. Katie Burke, who helped take HubSpot from a small private company to a publicly traded one, became Harvey's chief operating officer.
Other recent additions include Keith Enright, a former Google executive who joined as chief strategy officer, and Rachel Hepworth, formerly of Slack and Notion, who came aboard as chief marketing officer. Anique Drumright, formerly of Rippling, joined as chief product officer. John LaBarre, Harvey's first legal hire and a former Snowflake deputy general counsel, became chief legal officer. The executive lineup reads like a checklist for a company preparing investors for scrutiny, even if no listing has been scheduled.
Latham's Own Stake in Harvey's Growth
The reported talks are notable given how entangled Harvey already is with Latham & Watkins. The law firm signed a deal in 2025 to roll out Harvey's software to all of its lawyers, and the two organizations are developing custom tools for Latham's fund formation practice, according to Business Insider's reporting. Latham & Watkins has also built a formidable track record on the other side of the IPO table: the firm has advised companies on 186 offerings since 2016 that raised more than $101 billion, and Deal Point Data has ranked it the most active firm by deal count over that span.
Harvey's potential path to Wall Street would unfold against a market that has been unusually active this year. Through September 30, 83 traditional U.S. IPOs had raised more than $120.2 billion, compared with 60 offerings that raised more than $29.3 billion over the same period in 2025, according to PwC. Even so, PwC noted that IPO selectivity remains high, with investors focused on valuation, durable growth, profitability, and competitive differentiation — and that IPOs priced in 2026 had returned only about 2% on average through September 30, compared with a 12% gain in the S&P 500. Six sizeable offerings spanning consumer health, nuclear energy, insurance, advanced manufacturing and technology were postponed or withdrawn in September alone, PwC reported.
Watching What AI Rivals Do First
Harvey isn't the only AI company weighing a public debut. Business Insider's reporting indicates Anthropic, which has a reported run rate of $65 billion, could list shares as soon as the week before Thanksgiving, while OpenAI could go public in early 2027.
Harvey also faces direct competition on the legal-tech side: rival Legora raised $550 million in funding at an $8.8 billion valuation last month, according to Business Insider. The scale of the opportunity is part of what has venture investors excited in the first place, given that the United States alone has 1.3 million lawyers who could eventually rely on AI tools for document review and drafting.
Historical comparisons suggest Harvey's revenue already outpaces some companies that successfully went public. Affirm reported $509 million in revenue for the fiscal year before its 2020 listing, while Snowflake had generated $242 million in revenue in the first half of 2020 before going public later that year — up from $104 million in the same period a year earlier, according to CNBC's report on Snowflake's IPO filing. For now, though, Harvey's own path remains undecided, with the company watching how its AI peers fare on the public markets before it makes a move of its own.
