Google Ventures Doubles Down on Blacksmith Just 4 Months After Seed Round

In today’s fast-moving software development environment, speed has become the defining currency, and companies that can accelerate their release cycles gain a powerful competitive advantage. Blacksmith, a startup focused on optimizing continuous integration and delivery, has just secured a significant new investment to fuel its expansion. Google Ventures, having initially backed the company only four months ago, has now led a $10 million Series A round after witnessing impressive early traction.

This latest funding closed in a remarkably swift fourteen days, demonstrating strong investor confidence. GV had previously participated in Blacksmith’s $3.5 million seed round in May, betting on both the market potential and the experienced founding team. This time, however, the decision was driven by concrete results. Since its launch, Blacksmith has attracted hundreds of new customers, and the rapid adoption of AI-powered coding tools has further expanded its addressable market.

Co-founder and CEO Aditya Jayaprakash explained that the San Francisco-based company reached $1 million in annual recurring revenue back in February with a team of just four people. Growth has been explosive since then, with ARR climbing to $3.5 million and the customer base exceeding 700 organizations. The team has also expanded to eight members, with plans to double revenue again before the end of the year.

Blacksmith emerged from the direct experiences of its founders, who previously worked on large-scale systems at companies like Faire and Cockroach Labs. They observed how inefficient and expensive the continuous integration phase could be, often requiring hundreds of machines and extensive compute hours just to test new code. While major cloud providers offer their own CI/CD solutions, many development teams find them slower, more costly, and less predictable than they would prefer.

What sets Blacksmith apart is its infrastructure strategy. Rather than relying on generic cloud servers, the company operates on high-performance, gaming-grade CPUs, which it claims can double processing speeds and reduce compute expenses by up to 75%. Integration is designed to be simple, teams can switch over by altering a single line of code and begin seeing benefits almost immediately.

Jayaprakash emphasized the economic advantages of this approach, noting that by using bare-metal hardware, Blacksmith maintains tighter control over margins and scalability. This is particularly valuable for infrastructure-focused companies where compute efficiency directly impacts profitability.

In addition to faster builds, Blacksmith provides test analytics and observability features that give developers deeper insight into their GitHub Actions workflows. The platform is aimed primarily at engineering organizations with 500 or more developers, and its current client list includes companies like Supabase, VEED, Ashby, and Clerk.

The Series A round included continued support from earlier backers such as Spencer Kimball, CEO of Cockroach Labs, and David Cramer, co-founder of Sentry. Having graduated from Y Combinator’s Winter 2024 cohort, Blacksmith now employs eleven people and is positioned to capitalize on the growing demand for efficient, high-speed development tools.

(Source: TechCrunch)