Legal AI might not sound like the sexiest category in Silicon Valley, but Harvey‘s CEO Winston Weinberg has captured the attention of virtually every top-tier investor in the Valley. The company’s cap table reads like a who’s who of venture capital: the OpenAI Startup Fund (its first institutional investor), Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Elad Gil, Google Ventures, Coatue, and most recently, Andreessen Horowitz.
The San Francisco-based company’s valuation skyrocketed from $3 billion in February 2025 to $5 billion in June to $8 billion in late October — a rise that reflects both the bonkers price tags awarded to AI companies, and Harvey’s ability to win over major law firms and corporate legal departments.
In fact, the startup now claims 700 clients across 63 countries, including a majority of the top 10 U.S. law firms. It also says it surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue as of August.
TechCrunch spoke with Weinberg for this week’s StrictlyVC Download podcast to ask about the wild ride that he and co-founder Gabe Pereyra have been on so far. During that chat, he shared how a cold email sent a few summers ago to Sam Altman changed everything; why he believes lawyers will benefit rather than suffer from AI; and how Harvey is tackling the technically complex challenge of building a truly multiplayer platform that navigates ethical walls and data permissioning across dozens of countries.
This interview has been edited lightly for length. For the full monty, check out the podcast.
TechCrunch: You started as a first-year associate at O’Melveny & Myers. When did you realize AI could transform legal work?
Winston Weinberg: So my co-founder was working at Meta at the time; he was also my roommate. He was showing me GPT-3, and in the beginning, I swear to God, the main use case I had for it was running a Dungeons and Dragons game with friends in LA. Then I …