The two biggest names in legal AI are both quietly preparing for life as public companies. Harvey, the San Francisco legal AI startup valued at $15.5 billion, has held early talks with lawyers at Latham & Watkins about a potential initial public offering, according to Business Insider, which first reported the discussions on November 5. Its rival Legora is doing the same, sources told Artificial Lawyer a day later.
Neither company is close to ringing a bell. The talks are preliminary, no listing is imminent, and Harvey is expected to watch how the coming crop of technology listings performs before deciding whether to move ahead. Harvey declined to comment, and Latham & Watkins did not respond to requests for comment.
Harvey's early talks — and a team built for the public markets
The IPO groundwork fits a pattern. Harvey said in September that it had crossed $400 million in annual recurring revenue, and that fall it raised $550 million in a round led by Diffusion and Lightspeed Venture Partners, with Goldman Sachs Alternatives, J.P. Morgan's Growth Equity Partners, Coatue and funds advised by T. Rowe Price joining — the kind of institutional investors that typically appear on a cap table as a startup prepares to go public.
It has also been hiring people who have done this before. Steve Zad, who helped steer cybersecurity firm Rubrik through its 2024 IPO, joined as Harvey's first chief revenue officer. Former Google executive Keith Enright became chief strategy officer, Katie Burke — who helped take HubSpot public — became chief operating officer, and John LaBarre, Harvey's first legal hire and a former deputy general counsel at Snowflake, became chief legal officer.
Legora is doing the same — quietly
Legora, which raised $550 million in a Series E at an $8.8 billion valuation on October 21, is chatting to investment banks about what a future listing could look like — valuations, timelines and the main backers — according to sources cited by Artificial Lawyer. Its spokesperson declined to comment on speculation, saying chief executive Max Junestrand "has always said he'd like to take Legora public one day, but it's too soon to say when."
The two companies have raised roughly $1.8 billion (Harvey) and $1.4 billion (Legora) between them, and their race has become the defining contest in legal AI. Harvey's $400 million-plus in annual recurring revenue compares with Legora's more than $200 million, which Legora says it reached faster than any enterprise software company selling through a direct sales team.
A law firm bets $1.1 billion on the same shift
The same week, A&O Shearman announced a $1.1 billion AI strategy over five years — a sum drawn mostly from lawyers' time, with each practice committing at least 3% of its hours to developing specialist AI tools. The firm was Harvey's first client in 2022 and has since commercialised tools such as ContractMatrix, a contract drafting platform it says has grown ninefold year over year.
The timing is far from certain. Anthropic, the AI lab whose record listing is seen as the test case for the sector, saw investors question its roadshow this week after the AI selloff, and Artificial Lawyer notes that talking to bankers is no guarantee of a listing — companies can file preliminary paperwork with US regulators and still never move. For now, the message from both legal AI leaders is the same: the public markets are the destination, just not yet.
