Blacksmith, a startup focused on testing and validating AI-generated code, has raised a $45 million Series B round led by Peak XV Partners, the company announced Tuesday. The round values Blacksmith at $550 million — a nearly tenfold increase from the $60 million valuation it received when it raised a $10 million Series A less than a year ago.
Existing investors GV (Google Ventures) and Y Combinator also participated in the round, bringing Blacksmith’s total funding to $58.5 million. The startup, founded in 2024, helps companies build, test, and verify software before it reaches production.
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Explosive customer growth amid AI coding boom
Blacksmith now serves more than 5,000 customers, including Mercury, Supabase, Clerk, Ashby, and Expensify, according to co-founder and CEO Aditya Jayaprakash, who spoke exclusively with TechCrunch. That’s up from more than 700 customers less than a year ago.
The rapid adoption comes as AI coding tools such as Cursor, OpenAI’s Codex, and Anthropic’s Claude Code have made it significantly easier for software teams to generate code. But the quality of AI-generated code is not guaranteed, and that’s where Blacksmith sees its opportunity.
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“Validating code is still a bottleneck, and it’s an even bigger bottleneck because people are writing even more,” Jayaprakash said.
From CI workloads to AI-powered fixes
Blacksmith started as a cloud provider for continuous integration (CI) workloads, helping companies run the software builds and tests needed to validate code before it reaches production. The platform has since expanded with Codesmith, an AI coding agent that can automatically fix failed code checks.
Jayaprakash said Blacksmith reached a $10 million annualized revenue run rate with just 10 employees and has since grown its workforce to about 30. Revenue has grown to “tens of millions of dollars,” he said, though he declined to provide a specific updated ARR figure. Some of its largest customers now spend more than $1 million a year on the platform.
Crowded market, sharp competition
While the growth is impressive, Blacksmith operates in a crowded and competitive market. Its key competitors include GitHub Actions, Cursor Automations, validation capabilities built into Codex and Claude Code, as well as AI code-testing services from Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.
Jayaprakash said Blacksmith differentiates itself on two fronts: the speed of testing code and affordability. By focusing on these areas, the company aims to carve out a niche in a space where many players are vying for developer attention.
What’s next for Blacksmith
Looking ahead, Jayaprakash said Blacksmith plans to expand into a broader suite of coding tools, aiming to help developers write, validate, and merge software faster. The company’s rapid valuation jump reflects investor confidence in the growing need for AI code validation, a segment that is becoming increasingly critical as AI-generated code becomes more prevalent in software development.
The funding round also signals a broader trend: as AI accelerates code generation, the next battleground in software development is ensuring that code actually works. Blacksmith’s growth suggests that startups focused on this challenge are attracting significant investor interest.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. The startup funding and valuation figures discussed are subject to change, and the market for AI development tools is highly competitive and volatile. Readers should conduct their own research before making any investment decisions.
