Harvey's federal clearance is rented from Knox Systems, and any rival can rent the same gate in 90 days
Harvey set a $15.5 billion mark in September and Legora set $8.8 billion this month, both betting on a federal gate. The Marketplace record shows the authorization is Knox Systems', and the release names no agency customer.
Richard Tang · 3 min read
On October 28 Harvey$15.5B — Harvey, private, latest valuation $15.5B, the San Francisco legal-AI company, announced FedRAMP Class D certification, the security authorization US federal agencies need before running its software for procurement, contracting and public-records work 1. The announcement is real, but the gate it opens is not Harvey's: the authorization belongs to Knox Systems, the company the release itself bills as running the largest managed federal cloud 1.
The FedRAMP Marketplace record shows Knox's platform certified on March 30, 2026, with Harvey listed as one service inside Knox's boundary 2. Knox sells that door to any vendor, advertising FedRAMP authorization in 90 days 1.
The record behind the release
The listing, package FR2528033654, shows Class D (High), the agency path, steady-state continuous monitoring, and two authorization letters recorded so far 2. Harvey AI sits in the certified services list next to Adobe−0.90% — Adobe, down 0.90 percent today Connect, BigID, Vectra AI, Vannevar and Sierra 2.
The vendor-submitted description says application providers deploy into Knox's environment and inherit "a substantial share of the required security controls" rather than pursuing their own authorization, and FedRAMP notes it does not review that text 2. The release announcing Harvey's win carries "SOURCE Knox Systems, Inc" and quotes Knox's chief executive, Irina Denisenko, and it names no federal agency as a customer 1.
The marks were set before the record
Harvey raised $550 million in September at a $15.5 billion valuation 3. Legora$5.55B — Legora, private, latest valuation $5.55B, its Stockholm rival, raised the same amount on October 21 at $8.8 billion, on $200 million of annual recurring revenue 3. Legaltech took $2.9 billion across nine months of 2026, and these two rounds took nearly half of it 3.
Both marks price a company that owns the gate to federal and big-firm legal work. The record shows the federal half of that gate is a subscription, and the same door is open to Legora, to OpenAI$500B — OpenAI, private, latest valuation $500B, whose Startup Fund backs Harvey 1, or to any rival with a budget line.
Two private rounds took nearly half of legaltech's nine-month total
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Harvey, September | $550M |
| Legora, October 21 | $550M |
| All legaltech, 9 months | $2,900M |
Why the margin matters more than the badge
For investors the clearance is not scarcity, and the expensive part sits underneath. Harvey's gross margin fell from about positive 50% at the start of this year to minus 50% by June as its agents burned tokens, Bloomberg reported, and turned positive again only after it released a model of its own 4.
Anthropic's IPO filing shows the same trade from the other end: about a fifth of its first-half revenue came from two customers identified in industry reports as SpaceX's−1.06% — SpaceX, down 1.06 percent today Cursor and Microsoft's−0.85% — Microsoft, down 0.85 percent today GitHub Copilot, on usage-based terms with no long-term contracts 5. Harvey's federal revenue, when it arrives, carries rented compliance on top and usage-priced model costs underneath.
The marks now rest on unit economics, not the gate
The clearance is good news for people: agency counsel drowning in Freedom of Information Act requests and procurement documents get the AI faster, and Knox built the product that closed the gap between a security regime and a live deployment in 90 days, which is the work the fee pays for 1.
But the badge decides nothing about the valuations. What decides whether those marks hold is unit economics: whether federal agents burn tokens at fixed subscription prices the way Harvey's commercial agents did in March 4. No source yet shows an agency has signed.
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