Harvey Expands Its Footprint with Acquisition of Hexus
Harvey, a high-flying legal AI startup, has recently acquired Hexus, a two-year-old company that specializes in creating tools for product demos, videos, and guides. This strategic move is part of Harvey’s aggressive expansion efforts in a fiercely competitive legal tech market.
Joining Forces with Hexus
The founder and CEO of Hexus, Sakshi Pratap, who has a robust background in engineering roles at Walmart, Oracle, and Google, has officially joined Harvey’s team based in San Francisco. Additional engineers from Hexus, currently based in India, will integrate into Harvey’s workforce once a new Bangalore office is established. Pratap will lead an engineering team dedicated to accelerating Harvey’s offerings tailored for in-house legal departments.
Leveraging Expertise for Competitive Edge
“What we’re bringing to Harvey is deep experience building enterprise AI tools in adjacent problem spaces,” Pratap mentioned in an interview with TechCrunch. “This expertise helps Harvey move faster in a market that’s becoming increasingly competitive.”
Before the acquisition, Hexus had secured $1.6 million in funding from Pear VC, Liquid 2 Ventures, and other angel investors. Though Pratap did not disclose specific terms of the acquisition, she noted that the deal was structured with long-term team incentives in mind.
Strengthening Market Position
The acquisition arrives at a pivotal moment for Harvey, which seeks to cement its status as one of the most promising players in the AI startup landscape. The company revealed last fall that its valuation had reached $8 billion following a $160 million investment round. This brought Harvey’s total funding to $760 million by 2025. This latest funding round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from T. Rowe Price and WndrCo, alongside existing supporters such as Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins.
A Growing Client Base
Harvey now reports having over 1,000 clients across 60 countries, including several of the top 10 law firms in the United States. This impressive clientele speaks volumes about the trust and authority Harvey has built in the legal tech industry.
Harvey’s Origin Story
In a previous interview, co-founder and CEO Winston Weinberg shared the story of Harvey’s inception. It began with a cold email to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Back when Weinberg was a first-year associate at O’Melveny & Myers, he, along with co-founder Gabe Pereyra, tested GPT-3’s capabilities on landlord-tenant law questions sourced from Reddit. The response was overwhelmingly positive: two out of three attorneys indicated they would send 86 out of 100 AI-generated responses without any edits.
“That was the moment when we were like, wow, this entire industry can be transformed by this technology,” Weinberg recalled.
Their outreach to Altman took place on July 4, 2022, leading to a call that same day and subsequently securing funding from the OpenAI Startup Fund, which remains one of Harvey’s largest investors.
For more details on this acquisition and what it means for the future of legal tech, visit the full article Here.
Image Credit: techcrunch.com
