Chamath Palihapitiya raises $135M Series A for his AI coding startup, takes CEO role

Investor and podcaster Chamath Palihapitiya has landed a hefty new round of venture funding for the artificial intelligence coding company he started, and he is stepping in to run it himself. The entrepreneur disclosed on Monday that his startup pulled in a $135 million Series A, a sign that money managers remain eager to bet on tools that automate software development even as the market grows crowded.

Palihapitiya has built his public profile largely through Social Capital, the investment firm he leads, and through his role as a co-host of the All-In podcast, where he regularly weighs in on markets, politics and technology trends. Turning that platform toward an operating role at his own AI venture marks a notable shift, putting him in the CEO seat rather than simply backing founders from the sidelines.

The company behind the raise, 8090 Labs, secured its financing with Salesforce Ventures acting as lead backer. Additional capital came from WndrCo, the investment vehicle run by former DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg, along with Craft Ventures, the firm headed by David Sacks.

Rounding out the investor roster were two of Palihapitiya's fellow All-In podcast personalities: David Friedberg, who runs The Production Board, and Jason Calacanis, founder of Launch. A pair of prominent tech executives also joined as individual backers — Nikesh Arora, chief executive of Palo Alto Networks, and Adam D'Angelo, who leads Quora — lending additional credibility to the venture from outside Palihapitiya's immediate social circle.

8090 Labs got its start in January 2024, built around the idea of giving large companies' engineering departments an AI assistant tailored to their needs rather than a generic coding chatbot. Its flagship offering, called Software Factory, is pitched as a way for enterprise developers to move beyond rough, AI-generated prototypes and instead ship software that meets production standards. The company says the platform is designed with the oversight features large organizations typically demand, including tracking mechanisms that log how code gets written and changed.

The funding lands amid an ongoing rush of investment into AI-assisted programming tools, a category that has already produced richly valued players competing for both individual developers and corporate engineering teams. By emphasizing enterprise-grade controls and reliability over flashy demos, 8090 Labs is positioning itself against rivals that have leaned more heavily on rapid, informal code generation aimed at solo builders and startups.

Whether that enterprise-first pitch will separate 8090 Labs from a fast-growing field of well-funded competitors remains to be seen, and Palihapitiya's move into day-to-day leadership adds a layer of scrutiny given his existing commitments to Social Capital and his media ventures. The company has not disclosed a valuation tied to the new round, nor detailed timelines for expanding Software Factory's customer base, leaving open questions about how quickly it plans to scale beyond its current backers' networks.

Source: TechCrunch