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Marketing School - Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips

AI Law Firm Hits $100M But…

Marketing School - Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips

Eric Siu and Neil Patel

Marketing, Careers, Business

4.61.4K Ratings

🗓️ 24 December 2025

⏱️ 20 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, Neil and Eric break down the rise of AI hype versus real usage, using Harvey AI, Microsoft Copilot, and ZoomInfo as case studies. They discuss $8B AI valuations, low user adoption, retention challenges, and why paying for AI does not equal value. The conversation covers venture capital incentives, SaaS economics, AI theater, and what actually drives ROI in sales, marketing, and engineering. The key question: are companies buying AI for results or optics, and when will real value show up? Key Takeaways: -AI revenue ≠ AI usage -Valuations are outpacing adoption -Monthly recurring value matters more than ARR Chapters: (00:00) Harvey AI valuation surge (01:06) AI usage vs paid licenses (02:20) VC incentives vs PE reality (04:06) Retention and adoption issues (06:22) Copilot enterprise usage data (07:58) AI impact on sales teams (10:01) ZoomInfo AI ROI breakdown (16:25) AI SEO vs traditional SEO

Transcript

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0:00.0

Do you remember that AI law firm, Harvey?

0:04.5

Uh-huh.

0:04.9

They raised a lot of money.

0:06.8

Do you want to check how much they raised real quick?

0:08.2

I'm going to tell you something.

0:08.9

So Harvey just hit $100 million A-R, okay, $8 billion evaluation, 50 at the top M-Law 100 as customers.

0:17.0

I guess that's the top law firms.

0:19.8

The last round, October 29, 20, 25, 150 million at an $8 billion valuation.

0:25.6

Okay.

0:26.2

So Akash Gupta, and then who backed them, by the way?

0:29.9

I don't know.

0:30.5

And before that, they raised $300 million at $8 billion valuation.

0:36.2

I think a lot of the who's who is investors in it. Sequoia led

0:39.5

the $3 billion or $300 million round. Andresen, Kleiner Perkins. Probably in it. Yeah, I can't see all of them. But I see it. Co2 is in there too. Yeah, Andresen's in there, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, Kotu, and EQT. Elad Gill, he's in a lot of popular companies as well.

0:54.5

Yep.

0:55.3

Cool.

0:55.9

So the reason I'm calling this out, Akash Kupta tweeted this out. So again, 100 million in ARR, $8 billion evaluation, $50 to top M-law, 100 as customers. But here's a problem. So you know Microsoft co-pilot. When you look at usage for co-pilot, you look at Office 365. So 400 million users have paid for co-pilot subscriptions two years after launch. Less than 2% of people of those users actually use it. And this is the same thing that you're kind of seeing with Harvey too. People aren't really using it. They're just paying for it. And I think what the point here is, how is Harvey going to grow into it? Because you have a lot of people that are just paying for this stuff and not using it. And I remember maybe two weeks ago or so, someone was talking about how they bought these, these like, it was kind of satire. It was like, I'm a CMO and, you know, I bought 2,000 Microsoft team subscriptions or like AI subscriptions to make it seem like I'm doing something with AI. And then when someone asked me, I just say, hey, progress is moving up and into the right. We're looking at usage, right? And so it's a lot of, I almost want to say it's almost theater. It's almost AI theater. That's what I would say it is to make people feel like they're doing something with it. Yeah. And I'm not saying Harvey's a bad company. It's probably a great company, but you're not

2:04.0

worth $8 billion when you do $100 million in revenue, even if you're doubling every year.

2:08.6

It's just, it's too much. Even if you're tripling every year, your valuation is just

2:12.9

astronomically high because $100 million in revenue does not mean 100 million in profit.

2:18.2

And I was watching Orlando Brava, I believe his last name is, from Tama Brava, the big

2:25.8

private equity fund that gobbles up most SaaS companies.

...

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