Rising OpenAI, Anthropic Costs Push Legal AI Startup Harvey Toward Open-Source Models

Harvey's rethink is a signal about margin pressure in the application layer of AI, where startups built on frontier models face costs they cannot control. A legal-focused firm moving toward open-source alternatives suggests domain specialization may matter more than raw model access. The open question is whether open-source models can match the reliability that legal work demands, and whether other vertical AI companies follow the same path as frontier pricing stays elevated.