Builder.ai has raised $100 million in a Series C financing round led by Insight Partners, a New York-based venture capital and private equity firm. It also saw the participation of other investors including the International Finance Corporation (IFC), WndrCo and Nikesh Arora – CEO of Palo Alto Networks. Following the recent round, the total amount of funding raised by the company across all its rounds run into a total of $195 million.
Buildr.ai which was launched in 2016 originally as Engineer.ai saw a boost in its operations from the Coronavirus pandemic. The company is an AI-powered app development platform that requires little or no code. The company which helped businesses looking to build their own native apps shifted its focus and started launching pre-packaged apps, beginning with e-commerce and delivery. These were the business that thrived the most during the pandemic that kept everyone at home. This, of course, worked and the company said it has experienced a 230 percent growth in its monthly revenue since the pandemic started.
Currently, Builder.ai claims the ability to build software and apps up to 6 times faster and at most 70 percent cheaper than the traditional systems involving people. This, it says it does, without people having to know so much about tech. These claims have, however, been argued with people agreeing that they are all part of its marketing strategy.
A 2019 Wall Street Journal report mentioned that Builder.ai relied heavily on human engineers who were being led by an AI platform which made operations more smooth and more efficient. The report went on to add that the company was using hype to attract investors and customers. That same year, its Chief Business Officer – Robert Holdheim, sued the company on claims that it had exaggerated its AI abilities only to acquire financing from investors.
Although the company may have been relying on engineers to build the app, it has been using machine learning to speed up and automate the process. Today, the company has assembled a large number of software tools to gradually automate large parts of software and app building.
The new funding will help push its goals. The company says it is investing in the AI and automation capabilities of its platform which will include a new conversational AI called “Natasha™”.
In a statement, co-founder Sachin Dev Duggal revealed that “Our choice of investor for this round was very deliberate; we wanted someone who had deep insight and immense courage to let us think and do differently. This led us to the only natural choice – Jeff Horing and Insight Partners.”
Speaking on Builder.ai and its financing round, Jeff Horing, Co-Founder and Managing Director at Insight Partners said that “Builder.ai has spearheaded a new category in the low-code/no-code industry with an innovative business model and clarity of vision, fueling its 300% growth in the last year. I’ve been speaking with Sachin from the early days of Builder.ai and have witnessed how he and the team have built something very special. By truly democratizing access to complex software, Builder.ai is set to disrupt the core of how applications are built.”
“Builder.ai is one of those rare companies that has entered a brand new category; with technology that has a disruptive impact on the world around us; especially as companies continue the move to being digital-first,” Klaus Hommels, Founder and Chairman, Lakestar, added.
Ibhadojemu Lucky Emmanuel is a graduate of Education and Economics from the University of Benin. He has a passion for tech and business and has been writing professionally for over a period of five years. He's written across various topics and segments and knew tech-business was it when he first stumbled on it. He has a great passion for music and arts, and wants to visit as many countries as he can someday.
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