Artificial intelligence startup Engineer.ai secures $29.5 million Series A to empower everyone to build bespoke software

Engineer.ai, the human-assisted AI that empowers everyone to build and operate bespoke software, has raised $29.5 million in Series A funding. The latest round is led by Lakestar and Jungle Ventures with participation from Softbank’s DeepCore. Before the Series A funding, Engineer.ai has bootstrapped to $24 million in revenue. The company is set to cross the $100M revenue mark before the end of 2020.

Founded in 2012 by Sachin Dev Duggal and Saurabh Dhoot, the San Francisco-based Engineer.ai is a human-assisted AI that empowers everyone to independently build and operate tech products through two products that work together to be their virtual engineering team. The startup is on a mission to turn ideas into developed products for everyone. Whether you want to build something new or are already operating on the cloud, Engineer.ai empowers a single user to achieve more by doing less.

Engineer.ai’s Builder is an AI-powered Software Assembly line that breaks projects into small building blocks of re-usable features that are customized by elastic human capacity from around the world; delivering high quality bespoke software at a fraction of the price and time of traditional development. Engineer.ai goes beyond just building software, providing a fully integrated service to its customers from extended warranty via BuilderCare to the CloudOps marketplace that provides access to everything the bespoke software might need (hosting, microservices, marketing, etc.).

“We created Engineer.ai so that everyone can build an idea without learning to code,” said Sachin Dev Duggal, Founder and Chief Wizard of Engineer.ai. “This investment round validates our approach of making bespoke software effortless. The capital comes at a time of rapid growth and will propel the platform into the mainstream, allowing Builder to open the door for entire categories of companies that could not consider it before.”

The market opportunity for Engineer.ai spans the solopreneur to small and medium businesses, providing a completely scalable way to develop software products.

“Software is the centre of every business today and the market has been waiting for a solution that eliminates technical barriers to build software so that everyone can engage in the new economy,” said Manu Gupta, Partner at Lakestar. “By creating an AI powered assembly line combined with the best global human talent, Engineer.ai’s Builder bridges the gap between an idea and a software product to enable it.”

“The UK is known across the globe for cutting edge innovation and our world-class tech companies,” International Trade Secretary Dr. Liam Fox MP said. “It is because of companies like Engineer.ai and founders like Sachin Dev Duggal, that last year the UK secured more tech venture capital investment than Germany, France, Spain and Ireland combined. My international economic department is working hard to help firms go from startup to scale-up through initiatives like the Global Entrepreneur Programme which gives guidance to budding entrepreneurs around the world. The Programme has seen 900 entrepreneurs like Sachin invest in the UK since 2005 – creating more than 5,000 high quality jobs and raising more than £1bn in venture capital.”

Launched in June 2018, Engineer.ai has already attracted hundreds of customers across many geographies, from e-commerce and m-commerce platforms, to social apps, who have used Builder to create products like BBC, DiditFor, Virgin, Manscore, and ZikTruck.

“We’re believers in Engineer.ai’s total ecosystem; making Bespoke Software like the iPhone with aftercare and a marketplace for all recurring services; SME’s don’t need to go anywhere else,” said Amit Anand, Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Jungle Ventures. The Singapore based venture capital firm jointly led this round and is actively helping Engineer.ai expand its offerings in Emerging Asia with Singapore as a hub. “Ultimately Engineer.ai’s Builder is the new SaaS; except this time, it’s affordable, custom and actually delivers value to your business and its customers.”