Blacksmith raises $66M Series C at $1B valuation to make CI seconds-fast for the AI coding era
Y Combinator · youtube · 2026-11-03
In the first episode of Y Combinator's Built to a Billion, Blacksmith (YC W24) explains how it builds a faster cloud for continuous integration as AI coding tools generate more code.
- With testing and validation becoming the bottleneck as software production accelerates, the company grew 20x in a year and recently raised a $66 million Series C at a $1 billion valuation.
- The founders started as DevOps outsiders, building their first infrastructure on the same high-performance CPUs found in gaming PCs, renting servers originally designed for Minecraft and Call of Duty.
- Today a team of just 30 runs a much larger fleet, cutting CI waits from minutes to seconds. The episode covers finding the idea, winning their first 200 customers, and why faster testing matters even more as agents write more of the world's code.
Related event: CI Cloud Blacksmith Raises $66M Series C at $1B Valuation(4 posts)→
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