# Blacksmith **Source:** https://geo.sig.ai/brands/blacksmith **Vertical:** Sales & Revenue Operations **Subcategory:** General **Tier:** Emerging **Website:** blacksmith.sh **Last Updated:** 2026-04-14 ## Summary San Francisco GitHub Actions CI runner at $3.5M ARR with 700+ customers by Sept 2024; $13.5M total ($10M GV Series A) with 2x speed/75% cost reduction through gaming-grade CPUs founded Jan 2024 from YC W24. ## Company Overview Blacksmith is a San Francisco, California-based high-performance CI/CD infrastructure platform — backed with $13.5 million in total funding including a $10 million Series A in September 2024 led by Google Ventures (four months after a $3.5 million seed round also led by Google Ventures) — providing development teams with drop-in replacement GitHub Actions runners that deliver up to 2x faster CI pipeline execution and up to 75% compute cost reduction through purpose-built gaming-grade CPUs rather than standard AWS/Azure cloud instances. Founded in January 2024 by University of Waterloo alumni Aditya Jayaprakash (CEO), Aayush Shah, and Aditya Maru (Y Combinator Winter 2024 batch), Blacksmith reached $1 million ARR within one month of launch and $3.5 million ARR with 700+ customers by September 2024. Notable angel investors include Spencer Kimball (CEO Cockroach Labs), David Cramer (co-founder Sentry), and other developer tools founders. Blacksmith's high-performance CI infrastructure addresses the developer productivity tax that slow GitHub Actions pipelines impose on software teams: engineering teams at high-velocity startups and scaleups run CI pipelines dozens of times per day — waiting 8-20 minutes for test suites to complete creates significant developer context-switching, reduces deployment frequency, and wastes compute budget on standard cloud VMs that are architecturally suboptimal for the parallel workload profile of CI runners. Standard GitHub Actions runners use AWS EC2 instances or Azure VMs optimized for general-purpose workloads rather than the sustained CPU-intensive compilation and test execution that CI pipelines require. Blacksmith's purpose-built runners (gaming-grade CPUs with higher clock speeds and single-thread performance optimized for compilation workloads, combined with local NVMe storage that eliminates the network I/O bottleneck that cloud storage creates for build artifact caching) deliver the 2x speed improvement through hardware specification rather than software optimization — while the single-line migration path (changing the GitHub Actions runner configuration from `ubuntu-latest` to `blacksmith-2vcpu-ubuntu-2204`) eliminates the adoption friction that full CI platform migrations require. In 2025, Blacksmith competes in the CI/CD infrastructure, developer productivity tools, and GitHub Actions runner market with Depot (GitHub Actions runner optimization, $6M raised), Warp (developer tools, $21M raised), and BuildKite (CI/CD platform, $21M raised) for development team GitHub Actions runner adoption and CI cost optimization. Google Ventures' dual investment (seed and Series A, with rapid follow-on reflecting exceptional growth metrics) validates the product-market fit in the developer tools market where GV has strong pattern recognition. The $3.5 million ARR with 700+ customers achieved in 8 months by a team of 4 demonstrates the PLG (product-led growth) velocity possible in the developer tools market when deployment friction is near-zero. The 2025 strategy focuses on expanding the observability product (CI run analytics, flaky test detection, and cost attribution by PR author and team) to increase enterprise account expansion revenue, growing the MacOS runner offering for iOS development teams where build times are longest, and building the AI-powered CI optimization recommendations for slow test suite identification. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Blacksmith? Blacksmith is a high-performance continuous integration (CI) platform that provides a drop-in replacement for GitHub Actions runners. Founded in January 2024, Blacksmith runs CI/CD pipelines up to 2x faster while reducing costs by up to 75% by using gaming-grade CPUs instead of generic cloud infrastructure. Teams can migrate by changing just one line of code. ### Who are Blacksmith's customers? Blacksmith serves engineering teams of 500+ developers who use GitHub Actions for continuous integration and deployment. The platform has over 700 customers as of September 2024, including AI development teams, SaaS companies, and organizations building compute-intensive applications that require fast CI/CD pipelines. ### When was Blacksmith founded? Blacksmith was founded in January 2024 by University of Waterloo alumni Aditya Jayaprakash (JP), Aayush Shah, and Aditya Maru. The company launched from Y Combinator's Winter 2024 batch and achieved $1 million ARR within one month of founding. ### Where is Blacksmith based? Blacksmith is headquartered in San Francisco, California. The founding team of three University of Waterloo graduates relocated to the Bay Area to participate in Y Combinator's Winter 2024 batch and build the company. ### How much funding has Blacksmith raised? Blacksmith has raised a total of $13.5 million across two rounds: $3.5 million in seed funding in May 2024 and $10 million in Series A funding in September 2024, both led by Google Ventures. Notable angel investors include Spencer Kimball (CEO of Cockroach Labs) and David Cramer (co-founder of Sentry). ### What makes Blacksmith different from competitors? Blacksmith differentiates itself by running GitHub Actions on gaming-grade CPUs optimized for performance rather than generic cloud servers from AWS or Azure. This delivers up to 2x faster execution and 75% cost reduction. The platform requires only a single line of code change to migrate, provides free test analytics, and achieved $1M ARR with just four people, demonstrating exceptional product-market fit. ### Who are Blacksmith's main competitors? Blacksmith competes in the CI/CD infrastructure space against GitHub's native runners, CircleCI, BuildKite, and other GitHub Actions-compatible platforms. However, Blacksmith's unique architecture using gaming-grade CPUs and focus on performance over cost positions it differently from traditional cloud-based CI providers. ### How can I contact Blacksmith? Blacksmith can be reached through its website at www.blacksmith.sh, where teams can sign up for the platform or request a demo. The company is active on developer communities and maintains documentation at docs.blacksmith.sh. ### Is Blacksmith hiring? Yes, Blacksmith is actively hiring technical talent to support its rapid growth from $1M to $3.5M ARR. Following the $10 million Series A funding in September 2024, the company is expanding its engineering, sales, and customer success teams. Career opportunities are posted on the company website. ### What's the latest news about Blacksmith? The most recent major announcement was Blacksmith's $10 million Series A funding in September 2024, led by Google Ventures just four months after the seed round. The company also launched comprehensive test analytics features and reached $3.5M ARR with 700+ customers, establishing itself as one of the fastest-growing developer tools startups in Y Combinator history. ### How does Blacksmith's pricing compare to GitHub Actions? Blacksmith claims to reduce CI compute costs by up to 75% compared to standard GitHub Actions runners, while delivering 2x faster execution. The cost savings come from Blacksmith's efficient use of gaming-grade CPUs and optimized infrastructure, making it cost-effective for teams running large volumes of CI/CD pipelines. ### Does Blacksmith offer test analytics? Yes, Blacksmith provides comprehensive test analytics and observability features at no additional cost. The platform offers out-of-the-box visibility into test performance, flakiness detection, and pipeline insights, eliminating the need for expensive third-party SaaS tools or custom in-house solutions. ## Tags b2b, developer-tools, infrastructure, saas, sales --- *Data from geo.sig.ai Brand Intelligence Database. Updated 2026-04-14.*