Blacksmith has raised $45 million in a Series B round, valuing the company at $550 million. The round was led by Peak XV Partners, with participation from existing investors Y Combinator and GV. This new funding brings Blacksmith's total raised capital to $58.5 million.
The San Francisco-based company provides cloud infrastructure for software code verification. Its platform helps engineering teams create, test, and verify changes before they reach production. Blacksmith's clients include Supabase, Clerk, Ashby, and Mercury.
The majority of the new capital will be directed towards developing computational infrastructure. Additionally, the company plans to expand its engineering team in New York and San Francisco. Currently, the company manages hundreds of thousands of compute cores.
AI-powered coding tools, such as Claude Code and Codex, boost developer productivity. However, faster code generation leads to an increase in pull requests for engineering teams. Nevertheless, every change still requires building, testing, and validation before deployment.
Co-founder and CEO of Blacksmith, Aditya Jayaprakash, noted that the validation process has become a growing bottleneck. He emphasized that teams are producing several times more pull requests thanks to coding agents. This trend could make continuous integration infrastructure increasingly important.
Initially, Blacksmith focused on continuous integration workloads. Its cloud runs GitHub Actions on dedicated compute infrastructure and uses optimized caching and storage specifically designed for software testing. The company claims that migration may require only one line change in the workflow file, allowing teams to move workloads without rebuilding their development processes. Thus, Blacksmith aims to increase speed without demanding major infrastructure changes.
The platform is currently used by over 6,000 companies, a sharp increase from approximately 800 customers reported after the previous funding round. Blacksmith also reports that CI workloads are increasing weekly by 5%–10% since January.
Blacksmith has extended beyond infrastructure with its coding agent, Codesmith. This product allows developers to delegate coding tasks to the AI system. The agent is capable of creating functions, fixing bugs, and investigating failed validation checks. Codesmith also operates within the software testing process: it can diagnose CI failures and automatically resolve certain issues. Blacksmith is developing Codesmith QA for autonomous testing of changes before they are merged.
This strategy brings Blacksmith closer to the full software development lifecycle. Developers can potentially use the platform for faster code creation, validation, and merging. The company's goal is to reduce the friction between code generation and production deployment.
This shift reflects a broader change in software development. Artificial intelligence can now generate software at unprecedented speeds, so supporting infrastructure must handle large volumes of code without creating new delays.
The Series B round provides Blacksmith with additional resources to compete in the saturated developer infrastructure market. Its competitors include GitHub Actions and cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Furthermore, AI-powered coding platforms are developing their own validation capabilities.
Blacksmith competes in terms of testing speed and infrastructure cost. The company believes that specialized computing can provide better performance for continuous integration workloads. Simultaneously, it is expanding its software layer using AI-based development tools.
Peak XV Partners supported the company amid the transformation of software development influenced by AI. This investor manages over $10 billion in its funds, and its portfolio covers technology companies in India, the Asia-Pacific region, and other markets.
Multiplier has successfully raised $35 million in a Series B funding round. These funds are intended to scale its artificial intelligence-powered professional services platform. The General Partnership led this round, with existing investors Ribbit Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners also participating.
The acquired investments will be directed towards acquiring additional specialized firms that provide professional services. Furthermore, they will help the company grow its technological and operational teams in response to the increasing demand for AI-based business services.
Multiplier operates on a permanent holding company model. By acquiring existing enterprises, the company allows them to retain their names, management, and a significant degree of autonomy. Instead of replacing people with artificial intelligence, Multiplier creates AI-based products that enhance efficiency and the quality of customer service.
Founder and CEO Noah Pepper stated in a company blog post that AI should serve as a tool to empower working professionals, not replace them. He believes that AI tools allow specialists to dedicate more time to tasks requiring judgment by eliminating routine work.
Multiplier integrates its engineering teams directly into the acquired firms. The company has also hired over 30 technologists whose work, together with subject matter experts, leads to the creation of AI tools tailored to the needs of specific businesses. Since the companies using this technology are not exclusively owned by third-party software developers, Multiplier employees have access to client and supplier databases, which, according to the founders, means 'access to clients, products, and processes.'
The company's model is focused on industries where growth is limited by expertise. Many professional service firms rely heavily on experienced practitioners and manage information through disparate systems. Multiplier believes that AI can automate preparatory and routine tasks, leaving final decisions to qualified specialists.
Since its inception, the company has completed eight acquisitions, five of which were closed within the last year. It also has four other firms that have signed letters of intent. In total, the company's network serves clients in more than 10 countries.
The latest investment coincides with the appointment of a senior executive. This person will oversee finance, operations, partnerships, personnel, and the expanding San Francisco office. The company believes this approach ensures more effective scaling while preserving valuable client relationships and professional experience over time.
Allen Shim, former CFO of Slack, now holds the positions of President and Chief Financial Officer at Multiplier. The company plans to use the funds to effectively build a scalable technological base, team, and operational process architecture. Shim previously led the successful initial public offering of Slack before its acquisition by Salesforce.
According to The General Partnership, accounting and other professional services markets continue to face capacity constraints despite growing demand. The investment firm is convinced that Multiplier's approach allows trusted specialists to serve more clients without compromising service quality.
The new capital will primarily go towards additional acquisitions and further development of proprietary AI solutions. Multiplier intends to develop its specialized firms and improve its technological capabilities. The company's investment approach differs from traditional 'buy and build' strategies, where founders of acquired companies are completely replaced after the acquisitions. Instead, founders remain in leadership roles, receiving continuous support in the form of long-term capital and operational management.
Horizon3, a San Francisco-based company specializing in artificial intelligence-driven cybersecurity, has secured $250 million in Series E funding. The funds will be used to further expand its platform internationally across the globe. Following this round, the company's valuation exceeded $2 billion.
This valuation is more than triple the approximately $600 million achieved during the previous funding round a year ago. The investment is intended to support Horizon3's native cybersecurity expansion into international corporate markets and client operational activities.
The funding was led by NightDragon and NEA, with participation from existing and new global strategic investors. The company plans to accelerate innovation and strengthen proactive cybersecurity capabilities for enterprises facing increasingly complex, AI-driven threats.
The raised capital will be utilized for global sales development, marketing expansion, market growth, and initiatives to develop autonomous cybersecurity technologies worldwide. Horizon3 intends to increase its presence in Europe and enter the Singaporean and Australian markets through strategic international expansion.
The company will increase R&D investments to enhance its NodeZero platform and AI-based security agents. These autonomous agents are capable of effectively and automatically detecting and remediating vulnerabilities within enterprise IT systems.
The investment will also go towards strengthening the proactive AI security platform and accelerating the innovation process. This financing follows growing enterprise demand for protection against AI-driven cyber threats and evolving regulatory compliance requirements.
Snehal Antani and Anthony Pillitiere, former colleagues from JSOC, founded Horizon3 with the goal of automating penetration testing via NodeZero. NodeZero continuously attacks client networks using self-guided penetration testing technology to proactively detect cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
Unlike annual audits, the platform safely tests live production environments using fully automated continuous security testing capabilities. This helps enterprises identify attack vectors, prioritize security weaknesses, and quickly and efficiently implement remediation measures.
The company reported conducting over 310,000 security tests in client production environments globally. Unlike traditional testers, Horizon3 assesses the entire enterprise infrastructure while production systems continue to operate uninterrupted.
The platform also incorporates intelligent honeypots that help organizations detect active attackers targeting enterprise systems in real time. Currently, the platform is used by over 7,000 enterprises across sectors such as banking, healthcare, public administration, and Fortune 10 companies worldwide.
The rapid adoption of AI has changed the approach to how security issues arise. For instance, an attacker with the right automated approach can quickly identify weaknesses and initiate complex attacks faster than manual methods, which reinforces the automation of security assessment.
Horizon3 reported a year-over-year recurring revenue growth of approximately 120%, noting that its annual recurring revenue approached $100 million last year. The company serves between 7,200 and 7,300 clients globally, including managed service providers and some of the world's largest corporations.
The new funding will also support the development of AI training loops, allowing AI defense systems to continuously improve by analyzing new attack methodologies. This should support enterprises' efforts to move from simple vulnerability awareness to the ability to automatically mitigate the most severe security threats.
Given that new cyber threats emerge at 'machine speed' and with high sophistication, the company asserts that AI-based security testing is indispensable for enterprises seeking to protect critical assets and confidential data.
