Generative AI is giving software engineering a massive boost, and one startup just raised a supersized seed round for its tech that uses code to create generative infrastructure.
The startup, formerly known as appCD, rebranded to StackGen and raised a $12.3 million seed funding round led by Thomvest Ventures. FireBolt Ventures, WestWave Capital, and Secure Octane, all existing investors, also participated in the round.
Founded in 2023, StackGen helps developers and DevOps teams automatically set up the technical infrastructure needed for their software — think servers, databases, and networking — using the software itself. Traditionally, this infrastructure would be set up manually or with predefined templates, which can quickly become outdated.
StackGen, however, uses AI to automatically generate infrastructure directly from the code and ensures it’s always up-to-date, creating a faster process with fewer mistakes that requires less work for engineers.
Sachin Aggarwal, StackGen’s CEO and cofounder, told Business Insider that the advent of generative AI copilots has made it possible to accelerate developer velocity.
“The challenge is that infrastructure provisioning must keep pace with application code development,” he said. “StackGen supports development acceleration by auto-provisioning the infrastructure with security and compliance by default.”
Software engineering is emerging as a key area for AI disruption, largely thanks to copilots that can catch mistakes, write documentation, and, in some cases, write programs from start to finish based on a prompt.
A handful announced fresh funding rounds last month, including AI code review startup CodeRabbit, which raised $16 million; Codieum, a GitHub Copilot competitor that raised $150 million at a $1.25 billion valuation; and Magic, a genAI coding startup that raised $320 million.
StackGen is one of many startups that have recently raised supersized seed funding rounds. This is due in part to multi-stage firms rushing to compete as the first check-writer to a startup that could become the next big thing. While seed funding rounds are traditionally between $1 million and $5 million, a larger group of them are now $5 million and more in recent years.
For example, Felicis Ventures led a $10 million first round into the AI startup MemGPT, Swedish legal AI startup Leya closed a $10.5 million round, and Web3 gaming platform Gameplay Galaxy recently announced a $24 million seed round.
Check out the nine-slide pitch deck StackGen used to raise a $12.3 million seed funding round.
