Indian crypto startup Emergent raises $70 million at $300 million valuation from SoftBank and Khosla Ventures

In a sign of the demand, or hype, for AI startups, Emergent, an Indian startup building a “biocoding” platform for AI, has raised $70 million in less than four months after raising a $23 million Series A round.

The Series B round was co-led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 and Khosla Ventures, valuing the startup at $300 million after the money, sources familiar with the deal told TechCrunch.

Prosus, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Together, and Y Combinator also participated. Emergent has now raised $100 million within seven months of launch.

The funding comes as Emergent claims $50 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and more than 5 million users in more than 190 countries. The startup said it is targeting an ARR of more than $100 million by April 2026.

Like other coding platforms, Emergent uses AI agents to help users design, build, test, and deploy full web and mobile applications. It targets entrepreneurs and small businesses looking to ship products without having to hire large engineering teams.

“We continue to see tremendous demand across our top geographies — the US, Europe, and India — and we will continue to expand deeper into these markets,” founder Mukund Jha told TechCrunch, adding that the startup’s recently launched mobile app building service is seeing strong adoption.

Emergent says its headquarters are in San Francisco, but 70 of its 75 employees work from an office in Bengaluru. Jha said the startup is hiring aggressively across jobs in both countries.

Emergent competes with the likes of Lovable, Cursor, and Replit, all of which mushroomed into huge companies within two years of launch. AI-assisted programming allows users to develop their own apps without requiring a lot of actual programming knowledge or skills.

To its credit, Emergent has successfully exploited investor interest in these crypto platforms to fund itself. Accel also backed Rocket, another startup founded in India, in a $15 million seed funding round last year, along with Together Fund and Salesforce Ventures.

The deal is also notable because it marks SoftBank’s return to investing in India – where the company previously backed Indian commerce startup ElasticRun for nearly four years.

Emergent says the new funding will be used to expand its team, accelerate product development, and deepen its presence in key markets.