Harness is worth $5.5 billion in round led by Goldman Sachs

Almost nine years ago, Jyoti Bansal sold AppDynamics to: Cisco For $3.7 billion, just as the software startup was about to go public.

Bansal’s latest venture, Harness, is now worth much more than that, after raising $200 million in new capital at a $5.5 billion valuation in a Bansal-led financing round. Goldman Sachs.

Harness’ technology helps companies manage and monitor code generated with the help of AI, ensuring it doesn’t break, create security vulnerabilities, or trigger cost overruns. This is a compliment to the so-called jitter coding trend that has emerged with the explosion in generative AI.

In recent months, venture capitalists have poured money into startups like Cursor, Lovable and, most recently, Kilo Code, which sell subscriptions for tools for directing AI models to write and update software. Harness’ software leverages Anthropic and OpenAI models.

Earlier this year, Bansal strengthened Harness’ cybersecurity efforts by merging Harness with Traceable, another company he co-founded. Headquartered in San Francisco, the combined company has approximately 1,300 employees in total.

Bansal said Harness is on track to surpass its annual revenue target of over $250 million, growing by more than 50% on a year-on-year basis. This makes it larger than AppDynamics at the time it was acquired by Cisco.

Bansal is aiming for a different result this time.

“I believe we want to operate as a public company at the right market timing and thus grow in the long run,” Bansal said.

In addition to the financing round, Harness is also planning a $40 million tender offer to provide some liquidity to its long-term employees.

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