Blacksmith, a developer tools startup, saw its valuation surge from $18.84 million during its seed round in May 2025 to approximately $546 million after a $45 million Series B in May 2026, representing a nearly 29x increase. The San Francisco-based company, employing fewer than ten people, reached $3.5 million in annual recurring revenue by September 2025, up from $1 million earlier that year. The startup raised a total of $58.5 million across its seed, Series A, and Series B rounds spanning just five months, all backed by Google Ventures and Y Combinator. Its business model relies on owning physical servers rather than renting cloud compute to offer continuous integration pipelines faster and cheaper than GitHub Actions, serving between 700 and 800 customers including Ashby, Finch, Clerk, Veed, and Mintlify. With only eight employees generating $3.5 million in annualized revenue, revenue per employee stands at approximately $437,500.
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