Emergent raises $130 mn from Creagis, Sentinel Global, Ranjan Pai's Claypond Capital

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Vibe coding platform Emergent has raised $130 million in its Series C round of funding, co-led by Creagis, MNI Ventures, Ranjan Pai's Claypond Capital and San Francisco-based Sentinel Global.

Existing investors Khosla Ventures, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Lightspeed, and Y Combinator also participated in the round. The fresh infusion of capital values the company at $1.5 billion.

"Part of the money will be going towards our go-to-market. Right now, we're very focused on powering small and medium businesses to really automate themselves," Mukund Jha, co-founder and chief executive of Emergent, told Mint. “The other part of it will be going into building out the research team.”

Emergent's latest round comes barely six months after its Series B in January, when it raised $70 million led by Khosla Ventures and SoftBank Vision Fund 2. The startup's total funding raised to date now stands at $230 million.

The back-to-back rounds come at a time when vibe coding investment has cooled in India. Composio and Rocket last year raised $25 million and $15 million, respectively, both smaller cheques than Emergent.

“From a technology perspective, people are shifting towards fully agentic operating systems. Everyone wants production-grade, reliable products like agent management platforms that they can govern, and not just fragmented vendors,” said Anushree Verma, senior director analyst at Gartner.

However, Silicon Valley continues to see investors pumping money into the category. In March, Replit raised $400 million at a $9 billion valuation; Sweden-based Lovable is in talks to raise $300 million at a $13.2 billion valuation, according to European startup outlet Sifted. In June, SpaceX agreed to acquire Cursor in an all-stock transaction valued at $60 billion.

On expansion, Jha said the company plans to establish local offices in markets where demand is outpacing Emergent's physical presence. The company currently operates out of the US and India.

“Whenever we see a lot of demand, we would want to set up some local offices and understand the geography and needs well. Nothing definitive yet in terms of locations, but Europe is a big market, Australia is a big market, so we expect some of those areas where we will go deeper.”

The company started out focused on small and medium businesses and transforming their business processes through their technology. Today, that focus hasn't changed, even as the company has started selling to enterprises.

For SME's, Garnter's Verma said platforms like Emergent emerge as strong alternatives, given that heading to traditional developer agencies or companies that serve enterprises can be more expensive. “Smaller companies obviously look at pricing and look for potential alternatives.”

However, enterprises still contribute only 9-10% of the company's overall revenue, while SMEs continue to be the majority at 70%, with the balance made up by prosumers and other users. On average, SME customers spend about $400 a month on the platform, according to Jha. “Average order values in India are lesser than other geographies, but not extremely different.”

Emergent currently has 1.5-2 million monthly active users which it says is growing 15-20% month-on-month.

Geographically, revenue is evenly split between the company's more mature markets: North America contributes about a third of revenue, Europe another third, India 8-9%, and the rest of the world makes up the remainder.

Emergent is currently at $120 million in annual recurring revenue, according to Jha. “Over the next 12 months, we'll get to about half a billion in run rate based on the growth we have right now.” The company claimed to have hit $100 million in ARR in February this year, just eight months after it went live with the platform.

Rwit is a correspondent at Mint covering India’s burgeoning startup ecosystem and the venture capital and private equity firms that ...