- Specialization
- Distributed Computing
- Business
- Compute Hosting
- Market
- Software Development
- Ecosystem
- Not applicable
- Customers
Developersand 1 more customers valuesLess
- Enterprises
More details
- Organization type
- Commercial Company
- Ecosystem
- Not applicable
- Business
- Compute Hosting
- Specialization
- Distributed Computing
- Market
- Software Development
- Customers
- Developers, Enterprises
- Delivery models
- Managed Compute
- Revenue models
- Usage Based
- Listing status
- Not classified
- Latest equity round
- Series B
- Reported funding amount
- Not classified
About
Blacksmith builds a high-performance cloud platform for running GitHub Actions and CI/CD workloads, serving startups, enterprises, and more than 3,000 companies. It differentiates through its purpose-built hardware-software stack, owned global fleet of bare-metal machines, fast caches, and lower per-minute costs.
Market
Blacksmith competes in cloud CI/CD, specifically managed GitHub Actions runners and CI build acceleration. It positions itself as a drop-in replacement that can deliver up to 2x faster CI, 4x faster cache downloads, 40x faster Docker image builds, and substantially lower costs. Its main differentiation is purpose-built CI infrastructure—bare-metal gaming CPUs and co-located caches—versus general-purpose hosted runners and broader CI/CD platforms.
Software companies and engineering organizations that run GitHub Actions—especially teams with build, test, and Docker workloads where CI speed, queue times, and infrastructure cost matter. The likely buyers are engineering, DevOps, or platform leaders; Blacksmith reports serving more than 600 organizations and offers plans intended for businesses broadly.
At a Glance
Problem
Blacksmith addresses the cost and speed bottleneck in continuous integration (CI), especially for teams using GitHub Actions. Slow builds, tests, cache downloads, and runner queues delay pull-request reviews and releases; meanwhile, GitHub-hosted runners can be expensive, while self-hosting adds infrastructure and operational overhead. The main use case is giving engineering teams faster CI so code can be merged and deployed sooner, without increasing infrastructure spend.
Product / Service
Blacksmith is a managed, drop-in replacement for GitHub Actions runners. Teams can switch their workflow configuration to Blacksmith with minimal changes, after which Blacksmith provisions high-performance compute, including gaming CPUs, and runs CI jobs on demand. The service claims CI execution up to twice as fast, cache downloads up to four times as fast, Docker builds up to 40 times as fast, and no runner queue times, while costing about 60% less than GitHub runners. It also adds observability features such as visibility into slow or failing jobs and inline logs for pull requests.
Market
Blacksmith competes in the CI/CD infrastructure and developer productivity market, specifically the market for hosted GitHub Actions runners and build infrastructure. The incumbent alternative is GitHub-hosted Actions, while self-hosted runners compete on control and potential cost. Other alternatives identified in the research include Ubicloud, BuildJet, WarpBuild, runs-on, and Namespace; Blacksmith differentiates through a combination of speed, managed operations, and lower cost.
The available evidence shows meaningful commercial traction rather than a pre-revenue-only project: Blacksmith reports more than 3,000 organizations, over 50 million jobs processed monthly, and more than 30,000 developers, alongside customer stories describing substantial cost reductions and faster deployment. Third-party research records the company as founded in 2024 and having raised $59.1 million, although the available material does not disclose revenue or ARR.
Founders & Leadership
Funding History
Y Combinator
Google Ventures (GV), Y Combinator
Google Ventures (GV)
Not publicly disclosed
Recent News
Blacksmith announced a $45 million Series B led by Peak XV Partners, with existing investors Y Combinator and GV also participating. The financing values Blacksmith at $550 million, and the company said most of the new capital will fund additional compute capacity.
An independent technical post describes Blacksmith as an alternative to GitHub's hosted runners and reports reducing end-to-end test times to 2–3 minutes.
Google Ventures highlighted Blacksmith's infrastructure in an article about the AI bottleneck and described the relationship as an ongoing partnership with the Blacksmith team.
SiliconANGLE reported that Blacksmith raised a $10 million Series A led by Google Ventures, following the firm's participation in Blacksmith's $3.5 million seed round in May.
Active Roles
20Business Model
Blacksmith primarily uses usage-based, per-minute pricing for CI runners, with 3,000 free minutes per month and paid add-ons such as Docker layer caching, sticky disks, and static IPs. It also sells an enterprise offering with premium SLAs, priority support, dedicated support channels, onboarding, and higher concurrency.