Vercel attracts investor offers valuing cloud startup at $9 billion, nearly triple last year’s worth

Vercel might be on the verge of one of the biggest jumps in valuation the cloud sector has seen this year. The San Francisco-based startup, known for its developer-friendly “frontend cloud” platform and as the creator of Next.js, has drawn investor interest that could push its valuation to $9 billion, according to an exclusive report from The Information.

The new valuation is almost three times the $3.25 billion it reached just over a year ago. The offer also underscores how much heat remains in cloud infrastructure and developer tooling.

“Vercel, a nine-year-old cloud startup that companies use to host and develop websites and artificial intelligence apps, has been approached by investors offering to invest hundreds of millions of dollars at a valuation between $8 billion to $9 billion,” The Information reported.

Founded in 2015 by Guillermo Rauch under the name ZEIT before rebranding in 2020, Vercel built its reputation on making it easier for developers to build, deploy, and scale modern web applications. Next.js, the open-source React framework it maintains, has become a go-to for companies that want fast, scalable sites without the hassle of heavy backend work. The platform plugs into major providers like AWS, adding features such as edge computing, serverless functions, and AI-driven interface tools.

That AI push has been more than a side project. Earlier this year, Vercel’s v0 tool—built to generate user interfaces from natural language prompts—took home a 2025 Webby Award for developer tools. It’s part of a larger strategy that included acquisitions of Turborepo, Splitbee, Tremor, and, most recently, NuxtLabs in July 2025.

The business model blends usage-based pricing for infrastructure with paid subscription tiers: a $20 per seat Pro plan and custom Enterprise packages. That mix has landed Vercel in the sweet spot of the “Jamstack” movement, powering static sites that can still deliver personalized experiences. Major brands, including Under Armour, The Washington Post, Stripe, and Wayfair, are among its customers.

By May 2024, the company had crossed $100 million in annual recurring revenue, with more than a million developers using Next.js every month. Its growth has tracked the broader shift to cloud-native development and the growing role of AI in building software, putting it in the same conversation as Netlify, AWS, and newer AI-centric tools like Bolt.new, and Lovable, which recently raised $200 million in Series A funding at a $1.8 billion valuation to scale its AI “vibe coding” platform.

From $3.25B to $9B: Vercel Draws Big-Money Offers in Cloud Services Boom

Vercel has raised $563 million across five rounds, starting with a $21 million Series A in 2020 led by Accel and CRV, followed by a $40 million Series B that same year from Google Ventures. Series C brought in $102 million in 2021 at a $1.1 billion valuation, led by Bedrock and Tiger Global, followed by a $150 million Series D later that year, valuing the company at $2.5 billion. The most recent raise, a $250 million Series E in May 2024, pushed the figure to $3.25 billion.

The new investor interest—details of which remain under wraps—could mark the company’s next major leap. Whether the talks lead to fresh funding, an acquisition bid, or secondary share sales is still unclear. But the number alone signals strong market confidence in Vercel’s role as a bridge between developers and the vast, sometimes overwhelming, raw resources of the cloud. As Rauch once put it, those resources without the right tools are “a bag of 3,000 Legos.”

The timing fits a broader resurgence in tech valuations this year, with enterprise AI and cloud tools drawing large checks again. In April, for example, Supabase, another developer-focused platform, raised $200 million at a $2 billion valuation.

If Vercel takes the deal, the extra capital could fuel more AI-driven features and strengthen its enterprise security offerings—both hinted at in previous announcements. An IPO isn’t off the table either. The challenge will be to keep pace with cloud giants while continuing to nurture the open-source communities that have helped power its rise.

For now, all eyes are on whether the company moves forward and locks in a valuation that would cement it as one of the most valuable private players in cloud development.