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Aug 12, 2026, 11:00 AMStartups

Blacksmith Valuation Nears 10x Jump to $550M With $45M Series B

Blacksmith raised $45 million at a $550 million valuation as AI coding drives demand for faster software testing, verification and automated code fixes.

A flood of code tiles passes through a narrow sieve, symbolizing Blacksmith easing the software testing bottleneck.
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Summary

On August 12, 2026, Blacksmith announced a $45 million Series B led by Peak XV Partners, valuing it at $550 million, nearly 10 times the $60 million valuation attached to its $10 million Series A less than a year earlier. GV and Y Combinator also participated, lifting total funding to $58.5 million. Founded in 2024, Blacksmith now serves more than 5,000 customers, up from over 700 less than a year ago, including Mercury, Supabase, Clerk, Ashby, and Expensify.

Blacksmith provides cloud infrastructure for continuous integration builds and tests, helping companies verify software before production, while its Codesmith AI agent automatically repairs failed checks. CEO and co-founder Aditya Jayaprakash said Cursor, OpenAI’s Codex, and Anthropic’s Claude Code are accelerating code generation without guaranteeing quality, making validation a larger bottleneck. Blacksmith reached a $10 million annualized revenue run rate with 10 employees, then expanded to about 30 employees and revenue in the “tens of millions of dollars,” although Jayaprakash withheld current ARR. Some customers spend more than $1 million annually. Blacksmith competes on testing speed and affordability against GitHub Actions, Cursor Automations, Codex and Claude Code validation features, other startups, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. It plans a broader tool suite for writing, validating, and merging software faster.

Positives

  • The $45 million Series B lifted Blacksmith’s valuation from $60 million to $550 million in less than a year.
  • More than 5,000 customers use Blacksmith, up from over 700 less than a year earlier.
  • Revenue rose from a $10 million annualized run rate to tens of millions of dollars, according to Aditya Jayaprakash.
  • Some of Blacksmith’s largest customers now spend more than $1 million annually on the platform.
  • Codesmith extends Blacksmith beyond continuous integration infrastructure by automatically fixing failed code checks.

Risks & concerns

  • Aditya Jayaprakash declined to disclose Blacksmith’s current annual recurring revenue figure.
  • GitHub Actions, Cursor Automations, Codex, Claude Code, AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and numerous startups crowd the validation market.
  • AI generated code from tools such as Cursor, Codex, and Claude Code does not carry guaranteed quality.
  • Validation remains a development bottleneck as AI tools enable software teams to produce more code faster.
Primary sourceTechCrunchhttps://techcrunch.com/2026/08/12/blacksmiths-valuation-jumps-10x-to-550m-as-ai-coding-fuels-software-validation/
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