Legal AI startup Legora is valued at $5.6 billion and its battle with Harvey is getting hotter

Nvidia has set a new stone in its AI empire. NVentures, its venture capital fund, has backed Legora, in what is said to be its first legal investment in AI.

Leveraging artificial intelligence to help lawyers streamline their work, the Swedish-born legal tech startup is competing with US player Harvey.

Along with Atlassian and other new financial investors, NVentures has joined Legora’s cap table as part of a $50 million Series D extension that comes a month after the startup’s $550 million Series D round.

In this period, Y Combinator surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) — a feat that contributed to its new post-cash valuation of $5.6 billion.

That puts Legora’s valuation a little closer to Harvey’s, which reached $11 billion last month when Sequoia tripled its investment. Also participating in that tour were Andreessen Horowitz, Kuato, Conviction Partners, Elad Gil, Matt Miller, Evantic, and Kleiner Perkins.

Legora also has backing from high-profile venture capital firms; But it’s more focused on the big names it’s got as clients, like Bird & Bird, Cleary Gottlieb and Linklaters. According to the company, the platform it launched just 18 months ago is now used by more than 1,000 law firms and in-house legal teams in 50 markets.

Harvey has a game in this area as well. It claims 100,000 lawyers across 1,300 organizations are clients, from global law firms like Henggeler Mueller and Latham & Watkins to corporate legal teams at companies like T-Mobile and Bridgewater.

With the ultimate goal being world leadership, the Harvey vs. Legura rivalry is one they intend to play on each other’s turf. Legora has opened multiple offices around the world with a major focus on the United States for its expansion. Conversely, Hurricane Harvey is hurtling towards Europe.

With so much capital to spend on both sides, that battle has moved to mindshare. Not long after Winston Weinberg’s Harvey signed a brand partnership with actor Gabriel Macht, who plays a high-powered lawyer in the TV series Suits, Legora launched an ad campaign featuring movie star Jude Law under the slogan “Law just got sexier.”

Both companies may be right to bet big on marketing. Regardless of the competition, it is built on large language models made by the AI ​​giants that could become their competitors. When Anthropic launched a legal extension for Cloud not long ago, many publicly listed legal software companies saw their stocks decline.

Of course, Max Gunstrand, CEO of Legora, says he’s not worried.

“The basic models are improving rapidly, but the real value is in how we apply them,” he wrote in a statement. He also explains how the startup instills FOMO among its target users, noting that “legal teams that effectively embed AI today will shape how the industry evolves.”

NVentures’ investment is also a sign that Legora may have enough of a moat to protect it from model makers and its larger rivals.

However, Nvidia is also known for hedging its bets – it invested in both Anthropic and OpenAI before deciding it might have had enough.