As AI tools generate more software code, companies need ways to build and check those changes. Blacksmith, a platform for software building and testing, has raised a $66 million Series C led by Sequoia, reaching a $1 billion valuation.
Keeping up with software checks
Blacksmith focuses on continuous integration, or CI: the process of building, testing, merging, and validating code changes. These automated checks help teams assess whether changes are ready to be combined with the rest of a software project.
Co-founder and CEO Aditya Jayaprakash said the company was founded to make CI “less painful.” In a blog post announcing the financing, he said many companies are struggling to keep up with the volume of CI they need to run, particularly as AI writes more code.
The challenge, in Jayaprakash’s framing, extends beyond running more checks. As AI agents contribute more software, teams also need to know whether the resulting code can be trusted. That makes the systems used to build and validate code increasingly important to the software development process.
Growth and customer activity
Blacksmith said its annual recurring revenue has grown 17x. It also reported running over 90 million CI jobs, with each job representing an individual automated code check.
The company’s customers include Mercury and Granola. The figures and customer names offer a snapshot of the activity Blacksmith says its platform supports, while the new funding gives it additional capital as companies deal with growing volumes of software code.
A rapid rise in valuation
The Series C arrived just two months after Blacksmith’s $45 million Series B, which valued the company at $550 million. A year ago, following a $10 million Series A, its valuation was $60 million.
Across those rounds, Blacksmith has raised $125 million to date. The latest financing marks a sharp rise from its earlier valuation and places the company at $1 billion.
The round also points to investor interest in the infrastructure behind software development. Blacksmith’s pitch centers on helping organizations build and test changes at a time when AI is adding to the amount of code they need to review and validate.
Why CI matters as AI coding expands
Generating code is only one part of putting software into use. Changes still need to be built, tested, merged, and validated. CI systems automate that sequence of checks, so a growing stream of AI-written code can create more work for the processes that help teams evaluate it.
Blacksmith’s announced growth and job count suggest that it is handling substantial CI activity, though the company’s figures do not by themselves describe how its results compare with other platforms. Its central business case is that software teams need reliable ways to check code as the volume they produce increases.
With Sequoia leading its latest round, Blacksmith is positioning itself around that need. The company’s next challenge is to keep supporting customers as they run more automated checks and decide whether code, including code written by AI, is ready to trust.