Laravel 9.37 has a new rawValue() method to get a value from a SQL expression. Here are some examples from the pull request:
$first = TripModel::orderBy('date_at', 'ASC')     ->rawValue('YEAR(`date_at`)');$last = TripModel::orderBy('date_at', 'DESC')     ->rawValue('YEAR(`date_at`)'); $fullname = UserModel::where('id', $id)     ->rawValue('CONCAT(`first_name`, " ", `last_name`)');
Tip given by @LoydRG