Hottest AI Firms Are App Startups That Make Models More Useful

Not long ago, Silicon Valley was dismissive of startups like Harvey. While OpenAI developed cutting-edge artificial intelligence models with the potential to shake up almost every industry, Harvey had a more modest goal: building software that makes OpenAI’s technology more useful for lawyers.

“The market’s perception of companies like us… was that they’re GPT wrappers,” said Harvey Chief Executive Officer Winston Weinberg, referencing a derisive term used to suggest the repackaging of OpenAI’s models. If investors “were going to put money into something,” he added, “it needed to be into OpenAI or Anthropic.”

Today, so-called AI wrappers are all the ...