Emergent triples valuation to $300 million in SoftBank-led round

BENGALURU: AI software creation platform Emergent has raised $70 million in a Series B funding round led by Khosla Ventures and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with participation from Prosus, Lightspeed, Together Fund and Y Combinator. According to people familiar with the matter, the round values the company at about $300 million, more than tripling its valuation from roughly $90 million in the previous round. The funding takes Emergent’s total capital raised to $100 million within seven months of launch.

The investment also marks SoftBank’s first new India investment in nearly four years, following its backing of B2B commerce platform ElasticRun in February 2022, underscoring renewed investor interest in revenue-scaling AI startups from the country.

The company has crossed $50 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), up from about $18-19 million a few months ago, with growth accelerating as more users build and deploy complex, production-grade software on the platform, co-founder and CEO Mukund Jha told TOI. He declined to comment on the valuation jump.

Jha said the sharp rise in revenue has been driven by improvements in the platform’s success rate, with a growing share of users now building applications that are used daily to run their businesses. The launch of mobile app building capabilities has also emerged as a significant growth driver, allowing users to build and ship mobile applications directly from their phones.

“We’re seeing people build serious software and depend on it for business-critical workflows,” Jha said. “Roughly two-thirds of serious builders on the platform are now able to build and deploy their applications, up from around 10-15% when we started.”

Emergent allows users to build full-stack web and mobile applications using AI agents, handling front-end, back-end, deployment and scaling without requiring prior coding experience. The platform now has around five million users globally, with about 70-75% having never written code before.

Use cases have grown more complex over time. Jha cited examples including custom ERP and CRM systems built by small and medium businesses, staffing and HR management platforms, procurement tools and internal project management software. In one case, a clothing factory in Mexico built a custom ERP system on Emergent to manage operations for 500 workers, replacing a development project that would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

According to the company, around 70-80% of applications built on the platform today are complex web applications such as ERPs and CRMs, while mobile apps account for about 10-12%, and the remainder are simpler websites. Roughly 40-50% of Emergent’s paying users are small businesses, 30-40% are entrepreneurs, with the rest coming from hobby projects, personal use cases and development agencies.

Jha said revenue durability is improving as users deepen their reliance on the platform. “We’re seeing strong retention among serious builders, with retention north of 75-80% once someone has built and deployed a real application,” he said, adding that revenue from existing users continues to accelerate.

The Series B round comes less than three months after Emergent raised $23 million in a Series A round, a pace Jha said was driven by the company’s rapid growth rather than a pre-planned fundraising timeline. The funding will be used to expand the team, which has grown from about 23 employees to roughly 70-80, and to accelerate research and product development.