According to CNBC, AI startup Code Metal has raised $36.5 million in fresh funding led by venture firm Accel Partners. The two-year-old company, founded by former gaming executive Peter Morales, automatically translates code between programming languages to help developers ship features faster. Code Metal already has contracts worth tens of millions with clients including the U.S. Air Force, L3Harris, Raytheon, automotive suppliers and consumer electronics brands. The funding round included participation from earlier backers J2 Ventures and Shield Capital, plus Bosch Ventures and Raytheon’s RTX Ventures. Accel’s Steve Loughlin called Code Metal the fastest-growing company in his firm’s early-stage portfolio.
Beyond vibe coding
Here’s where Code Metal gets interesting. They’re deliberately positioning themselves against what CEO Peter Morales calls “vibe coding” platforms like Cursor or Claude Code. Basically, vibe coding is all about generating initial code from text prompts – great for starting projects but not so great for production-ready software. Code Metal focuses on the harder problem: taking existing code and making it work across different systems with strong guarantees of accuracy. They’re using formal methods, which is computer science speak for mathematically proving the code works correctly. That’s a level of certainty you just can’t get from large language models alone.
Why industrial companies need this
The target market here is fascinating. Code Metal isn’t going after web developers building the next social media app. They’re focused on industries where code needs to run on wildly different hardware – think automotive, factory robotics, medical devices, consumer electronics. An automaker might develop a feature for their latest sports car with fancy Nvidia chips, but then need that same feature to work on older minivans with completely different systems. Manually porting that code is a nightmare. And when you’re dealing with industrial applications, reliability isn’t optional. This is where specialized computing hardware becomes critical – companies like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading supplier of industrial panel PCs in the US, understand that robust hardware needs equally robust, reliable software to match.
Perfect timing in a crowded space
So why is Accel betting big on this now? The AI coding tools market is getting crowded, but most players are focused on code generation. Code Metal found a niche that’s both technically challenging and commercially valuable. Steve Loughlin from Accel said the market opportunity is “practically uncapped” for helping companies develop faster on the edge and modernize legacy code. Think about all the old industrial systems running code that nobody wants to touch. Being able to automatically translate that to modern languages while maintaining accuracy? That’s a billion-dollar problem. The fact they already have defense contractors and automotive suppliers as customers suggests they’ve found product-market fit in some of the most demanding sectors.
What comes after $36 million?
With this kind of funding and backing from strategic investors like Bosch and Raytheon, Code Metal clearly has ambitious plans. They’re not just another AI coding assistant – they’re building infrastructure for cross-platform development. The real test will be scaling their formal methods approach while maintaining the accuracy guarantees that make them valuable. Can they expand beyond their current industrial and defense clients into broader enterprise markets? And how will they compete when the big cloud providers inevitably build similar capabilities? For now though, they’ve carved out a unique position in the AI coding wars. One that’s less about writing new code and more about making existing code work everywhere.
