Code Metal secures $125M Series B at $1.25B valuation to verify AI-translated defence code
What's the deal? Code Metal, a Boston startup founded in 2023, has raised $125 million in a Series B round led by Salesforce Ventures, valuing it at $1.25 billion. The company uses AI to translate legacy code into modern programming languages — and mathematically verify that the output is correct — targeting defence contractors, aerospace firms, and semiconductor companies stuck maintaining software written decades ago.
The round follows a $36 million Series A just months ago. Customers already include L3HarrisDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, RTXDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, ToshibaDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, and the US Air ForceDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. The company says it is profitable.
Why now? Defence and aerospace systems run on ageing code written in languages like Ada, COBOL, and Fortran — maintained by a shrinking pool of specialists. As AI-generated code proliferates, the risk of undetected errors in mission-critical systems grows sharper. The Pentagon has been pushing for faster software modernisation, and contractors are under pressure to modernise without breaking anything.
Code Metal's pitch is that speed without verification is too dangerous in environments where a software bug can ground an aircraft or compromise a weapons system. Its platform generates test harnesses at each translation step, providing proof of equivalence between old and new code rather than just hoping the output works.
What could go wrong? The company is deliberately vague about its methodology, which makes independent assessment difficult. Error rates vary by how complex the translation is — and for conversions the platform cannot complete, it simply refuses rather than producing flawed output. That is prudent, but it also means the total addressable use case may be narrower than the pitch suggests.
Defence procurement is also notoriously slow. Early customers are promising, but scaling from pilots to large programme-of-record contracts takes years and requires navigating layers of government bureaucracy.
The signal: Code Metal sits at the intersection of two converging pressures: the AI code generation boom and the defence sector's software modernisation crisis. As AI researcher Andrej Karpathy noted — and Code Metal's CEO was quick to quote — the industry may end up rewriting large fractions of all software ever written, many times over.
The startups that make that process safe and verifiable, not just fast, are building infrastructure with long-term, recurring demand. A profitable unicorn after less than two years is a rare data point — and a signal that the market is real.
Sources:
Sales Force
The Tech Buzz
VentureBurn
Wired
A.M.
