The San Francisco and Bengaluru-based startup that empowers businesses to build, test, and ship mobile and web applicationsraised a total of $100 million within seven months of its launch.
The fundraising marks SoftBank’s first new investment in an Indian startup after the Japanese investor refrained from new injections for almost four years. Its last new bet was on B2B e-commerce startup ElasticRun in early 2022, when it led a $300 million funding round. Over the past year, the Masayoshi Son-led group has also recalibrated its investments to double its investments in AI across the world.
The round also saw participation from Prosus, Lightspeed, Together Fund and Y Combinator.
The latest funding comes three months later Emerging raised $23 million led by Lightspeed.
Emergent has grown its annual recurring revenue (ARR) to $50 million and claims more than 5 million users in over 190 countries creating and shipping products live on its platform.
Founded by twin brothers Mukund and Madhav Jha in 2025, Emergent competes with global players such as Sweden’s Lovable and San Francisco-based Replit. Emergent, like its competitors, focuses on targeting non-engineers and developers.
Mukund Jha co-founded hyperlocal delivery startup Dunzo, backed by Trusted Industries, which closed its doors last year in the middle of a cash flow crisis.
The funding highlights strong investor appetite for companies building tools around so-called “vibrational coding” and artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted software development. The company’s rapid revenue growth from around $100,000 in ARR to $50 million in seven months was driven by adoption by startups, individual developers and small businesses.
“We already have a lot of small business owners and entrepreneurs using Emergent to run mission-critical software built on the platform. They compare Emergent to spending $250,000 or $500,000 at a development shop to build custom software. Now they’re able to build that same software themselves for less than $5,000 on Emergent. That’s the kind of change we’re seeing in the market right now,” said Jha.
About 70% of Emergent’s users are based in North America and Europe, most building serious applications to launch and run business-critical software, according to Jha. A large portion of the company’s user base is made up of small and medium-sized business owners, who make up about 50-60% of users, including factory owners and construction companies looking to digitize their existing operations. Emergent has about 5 million users, of which about 100,000 are paying customers, he said.
About 35% of its users are entrepreneurs trying to launch new businesses, many of whom are creating AI-native software or developing new ideas they want to commercialize.
Emergent plans to use the new capital to expand its engineering and marketing teams, accelerate product development and enter new markets as global demand for AI-based software creation tools increases.
The company’s global rivals, Lovable and Replit, have so far raised more than $650 million and $500 million, respectively, reflecting growing investor interest in the rapidly evolving AI native software development market. While Lovable counts Accelerate and Alphabet Capital G’s venture capital fund on its cap table, Replit was backed by Andreessen Horowitz.
Khosla Ventures, which led the latest funding round for Emergent, also invested in Replit. With investors such as Khosla Ventures and SoftBank on its cap table, Emergent will have access to as much capital as it needs to grow its business, said Sarthak Misra, partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers.
“Historically, whenever we’ve seen a company remove costs or reduce complexity significantly, the business has grown much faster and the market has ended up being much larger than expected,” he told ET. “Small and medium-sized businesses have historically found software inaccessible, too complex, or too expensive. Emergent removes much of that cost and complexity and allows these businesses to actually build the applications they need.”
Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, said in a statement: “When the barriers to building software fall so quickly, behaviors change across all industries, not just technology. Emergent is the first to shape how software will be built and monetized over the next decade, not just the next product cycle, and its users are quick to share their success.”