Harness Announces $240 Million Financing Led by Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS)

Harness, a leading AI Software Delivery Platform, has secured a significant $240 million Series E financing round. This round is spearheaded by Goldman Sachs Alternatives with a primary investment of $200 million, supplemented by a planned $40 million tender offer featuring participation from prestigious venture firms such as IVP, Menlo Ventures, and Unusual Ventures. This funding elevates Harness's valuation to $5.5 billion and underscores the growing demand for an integrated, AI-driven solution for software delivery.

AI Transformation in Software Engineering

The current software engineering landscape is undergoing a dramatic evolution thanks to advancements in AI technology. As teams traditionally allocate only 30-40% of their effort to writing and iterating code, a significant 60-70% of their time is consumed by processes in the "outer loop," including testing, deployments, security, compliance, and optimization. Harness aims to revolutionize these often-manual, interconnected processes through intelligent automation.

The volume of code is on the rise, with reports indicating an acceleration of up to 4x. Each line of code continues to require rigorous testing, security checks, deployments, and ongoing maintenance. As organizations increasingly turn to AI-generated code, they face the challenge of bridging the gap between rapid development and delivering reliable software safely. Harness addresses this need by providing a comprehensive platform equipped with AI capabilities tailored for the entire after-code lifecycle.

Leadership Quotes and Insight

"The next frontier for AI in software engineering is applying intelligence to the delivery process — testing, verification, deployments, governance, and everything that happens after code is written," stated Jyoti Bansal, cofounder and CEO of Harness. "With the rapid acceleration of AI usage, our customers need clarity, automation, and control throughout the delivery lifecycle to ship software quickly and reliably at scale."

The Comprehensive AI Solution: Harness AI

The new funding will catalyze the growth of Harness AI, a unified system engineered for everything beyond code. Built to eliminate bottlenecks that impede engineering velocity, Harness AI integrates:

• AI Agents: Specialized agents for delivery, testing, verification, security, governance, and operational tasks that eliminate the manual coordination typically required across disparate teams and tools.
• Software Delivery Knowledge Graph: A comprehensive context model that aligns code changes, services, deployments, tests, environments, incidents, policies, and cost signals, ensuring precision and reliability.
• Enterprise-grade Orchestration Engine: A robust execution engine that translates AI insights into consistent automation across pipelines and ensures safe and predictable decision-making.

By leveraging organizational context, Harness AI ensures that all actions taken are accurate and relevant to each customer's unique architecture and workflows. This allows teams to expedite shipping processes without increasing risk, as the platform effectively manages underlying complexities.

Impact on Enterprise Customers

The efficacy of Harness's platform is evidenced by its growing customer base of over 1,000 enterprise clients, including:

• United Airlines: Accelerated deployment times by 75% and migrated 80% of workloads to the cloud.
• Morningstar: Achieved 5x faster builds while consolidating 36,000 pipelines into just 50 templates.
• Keller Williams: Increased deployment frequency by 6x and saved 3 weeks in every release cycle.
• National Australia Bank (NAB): Reduced build times by 67% and improved troubleshooting efficiency by 85%.

Goldman Sachs' Perspective

"AI has shifted the bottleneck from writing code to delivering it, and Harness is solving that problem at an enterprise scale," remarked Beat Cabiallavetta, Partner at Goldman Sachs Alternatives. "Their unified platform effectively combines AI, context, governance, and security, appealing to organizations that are redesigning their engineering systems to thrive in the AI era."

Harness's Vision for Future Growth

With this new funding, Harness plans to:

• Propel innovations across its platform.
• Expand its global reach and operations.
• Advance its vision for an automated, secure, resilient, and design-governed software production process.

To learn more about Harness and their vision for AI in software delivery, visit harness.io.

About Harness

Harness is the AI DevOps Platform™ enabling engineering teams to build, test, and deliver software more efficiently and securely. With the integration of Harness AI and the Software Delivery Knowledge Graph, the platform streamlines every stage of the software delivery lifecycle. Companies such as United Airlines and Choice Hotels have utilized Harness to hasten releases by up to 75%, reduce cloud costs by 60%, and enhance overall DevOps efficiency by a factor of 10.

About Goldman Sachs Alternatives

Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) stands as one of the foremost global investors in alternatives, managing over $500 billion in assets and boasting more than 30 years of industry experience. Their investment spectrum includes private equity, growth equity, private credit, real estate, infrastructure, sustainability, and hedge funds. This approach facilitates long-term performance and success in collaboration with clients across industries.