In this edition of Localogy’s Local Radar, we examine newly funded companies Harvey, Liberate & Cyphr
1. Harvey
Startups that automate various legal workflows using AI have been a fixture in this Local Radar series. We even ran a special edition just on AI-fueled legal tech startups. The latest company to join that list is Harvey. Like others we’ve profiled, it offers law firms tangible cost savings by automating rote aspects of legal work, including everything from contract review to document collaboration. And it’s working so far with 700 clients across 63 countries, including a majority of the top 10 U.S. law firms. These wins have translated to its most recent milestone: surpassing $100 million in ARR. Its valuation has meanwhile ratcheted up aggressively, from $3 billion in February to $5 billion in June to $8 billion currently. The company has also been painted as a darling of Silicon Valley with an investor list that includes the OpenAI Startup Fund, Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures, and Andreessen Horowitz.
2. Liberate
As implied above, many AI startups are verticalizing. We’ve seen approaches that zero in on not just legal but autos and accounting. This makes sense as AI training is most effective when it can gain intelligence on the inner workings and best practices of a given field… and those nuances vary across verticals. To that end, the latest example is Liberate, which focuses on insurance. Battling some macro-economic factors that have diminished margins in the insurance world – especially anything outside of life insurance – the company brings some operational efficiencies to insurance offices via automation. This includes an AI assistant that handles inbound and outbound calls to help sell policies or handle service requests like processing claims. And on the back end, its reasoning-based AI agents learns all of the dynamics that make those automated sales functions work right. The company recently attracted $50 million, led by Battery Ventures, at a $300 post-money valuation. It will use the funds to develop its software – a quickly-moving target in the AI era – and beef up its business development to sell into more carriers and agencies.
3. Cyphr
Sometimes the SMB world acts differently than other segments of the economy. One place that’s true is in funding and seed capital. Besides traditional bank loans, SBA loans, and “friends & family” equity investing, the SMB funding scene is a bit opaque and fragmented. Cyphr hopes to change that by bringing some of the more federated and established standards of enterprise investing to the SMB world. It does this partly through a marketplace model to connect investors with SMBs in need of funding. It takes this a step further with an AI engine that can evaluate the investment risk of any given startup. It ingests several public signals to do so, bringing some investor confidence into the formula. The company has raised about a million in funding itself, and is in the process of operationally expanding beyond its Kansas City HQ.
Header image credit: Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash
