Blacksmith, a next-generation high-performance CI (Continuous Integration) cloud platform, has raised $3.5 million in seed funding to redefine how development teams manage and scale in the age of AI-driven coding. The round was led by GV (Google Ventures) and Y Combinator, with participation from prominent angel investors including Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis (Cockroach Labs) and Rich Aberman (WePay by J.P. Morgan).
Reimagining CI for the AI-Powered Development Landscape
As AI-generated code and autonomous agents flood software pipelines, legacy CI tools have become performance bottlenecks, slowing down innovation. Blacksmith’s founders are tackling this head-on by rethinking CI architecture from the ground up, delivering speed, scale, and optimization specifically for AI-era development workflows.
“Existing CI platforms often act as a bottleneck rather than an accelerator. Blacksmith is tackling this head-on by rethinking CI from the ground up,” said Erik Nordlander, General Partner at GV.
Unlike traditional CI platforms built on AWS, GCP, or Azure wrappers, Blacksmith offers a purpose-built hardware-software stack, allowing performance trade-offs that hyperscalers can’t achieve due to their general workload requirements. This makes Blacksmith highly optimized for modern, high-frequency, AI-augmented software delivery.
Powering Growth for Startups and Enterprises
Already serving over 600 organizations, Blacksmith’s client base includes fast-scaling startups such as Ashby, Veed, Finch, Pylon, and Plex. These companies leverage Blacksmith’s robust infrastructure to accelerate development cycles, reduce latency, and drive faster time-to-market in competitive sectors.
“Instead of watching companies slow down trying to retrofit legacy CI for AI workflows, we’re rebuilding from first principles,” said Aayush, Co-founder of Blacksmith.
A Competitive Edge in the CI Space
As development accelerates in volume and complexity due to AI, Blacksmith’s differentiated architecture positions it as a challenger to legacy platforms like GitHub Actions and AWS CodeBuild. The company aims to provide uncompromising performance and developer-centric tools that scale with the demands of modern coding environments.
With fresh capital, Blacksmith will continue to scale its infrastructure, invest in engineering talent, and support the evolving needs of AI-native development teams.