Peter Morales started Code Metal two years ago, jumping into the market for artificial intelligence coding tools at a time when AI companies were rapidly changing the market for software development.
Now he's got $36.5 million in the bank, thanks to an investment led by venture firm Accel Partners, known for early bets on Facebook , Dropbox and Atlassian .
Code Metal's technology allows software engineers to write code once, then automatically translate it into any other programming language so they can ship new features faster and to a wider swath of users. Morales, who was previously technology chief at a gaming company, said Code Metal's offering is particularly appealing to developers working on software to run appliances, consumer electronics, factory robotics, autos and medical devices.
Those are industries with products that contain a wide array of chips, which come with different software development kits, operating systems and code libraries. Morales gave the example of an automaker creating a feature for a new model sports car running on the latest Nvidia chip, and the challenge of porting the code behind the feature to the company's older line of minivans. Code Metal's AI would automatically handle the translation.
Morales is positioning the company as distinct from so-called vibe-coding platforms like Cursor or Anthropic's Claude Code, which allow users to automate much of the process of writing software with text prompts.
"Vibe coding is all about explaining an initial idea in text, and generating code that will get you started developing your minimum viable product," Morales said. "This is not where most companies spend their time. Code Metal focuses on bringing code to production. That requires strong guarantees the code we're converting is accurate, compliant and working as expected."
Morales said large language models alone can't provide this level of certainty, so Code Metal employs what computer scientists call formal methods to check the code and make it's been translated correctly.
The company, based in Boston, says it's already struck contracts worth tens of millions of dollars with commercial and public sector clients, including the U.S. Air Force, L3Harris and Raytheon as well as some automotive suppliers and consumer electronics brands.
Accel's Steve Loughlin, who led the deal, said Code Metal is the fastest growing company in his firm's portfolio of early-stage startups, and that demand for its technology is surging.
"The market opportunity is practically uncapped here," Loughlin said, "to help people develop on the edge much faster and modernize legacy code."
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