Emergent recently introduced Wingman, an AI agent that businesses can interact with through WhatsApp and email
AI software creation platform Emergent has achieved unicorn status, raising $130 million in its Series C funding round at a post-money valuation of $1.5 billion, becoming a unicorn in first year of its launch.The round was led by Creaegis, with MNI Ventures - Claypond Capital and Sentinel Global as co-lead investors, and participation from Khosla Ventures, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Lightspeed and Y Combinator.The latest raise values the company five times higher than its previous round and makes Emergent a unicorn within a year of its public launch. More than 12 million applications have been built on the platform by users across 190 countries.Sharp business growthChief Executive Officer Mukund Jha said the fresh capital comes after the company recorded sharp business growth over the past few months.“Since our last fundraise in December, our business has grown almost 4x in terms of users, revenue, significant improvement in customer acquisition costs, significant improvement in gross margin and significant improvement in retention overall,” Jha told businessline.The company plans to deploy the capital towards product development and expanding its go-to-market efforts. However, Jha said Emergent’s ambitions have evolved beyond enabling users to build applications without writing code.“Earlier we were a software-building platform, now we are trying to become this operating system for small and medium businesses,” he said. “Businesses can not only build software but also automate a large part of their day-to-day work on top of our platform.”AI agentAs part of that strategy, Emergent recently introduced Wingman, an AI agent that businesses can interact with through WhatsApp and email. The agent helps manage social media, marketing, lead qualification and outbound calls, allowing businesses to automate routine workflows.The company’s customer base is increasingly shifting towards businesses. According to Jha, SMBs now account for nearly 70 per cent of Emergent’s revenue, up from around 20 per cent when the platform was launched. Around 10 per cent of free users eventually convert into paying customers.Jha attributed the growth to businesses building customised software instead of relying on off-the-shelf SaaS products.“The people who are closest to the problems are going to start building software they’ve always wanted to build, which is specific to their needs, versus buying an off-the-shelf SaaS product,” he said.On competition in the fast-growing AI coding space, where companies such as Cursor, Lovable, Bolt and Replit are also expanding rapidly, Jha said Emergent’s advantage lies in the quality of its platform and the data generated through millions of applications built by users.“Every single app that is getting built on the platform is improving the platform,” he said, adding that the feedback loop allows Emergent’s AI agents to continuously improve software generation and debugging.The platform is witnessing adoption across manufacturing, construction, healthcare, hospitality and retail, with customers building applications ranging from inventory management systems and CRMs to marketplaces and dispatch software. Jha cited the example of a South African trucking company that built its own fleet management application on Emergent, helping quadruple its revenue.India-friendly pricingIndia currently contributes around 8-9 per cent of Emergent’s revenue, although the company is seeing strong growth among entrepreneurs, D2C brands and educational institutions. While subscription pricing remains largely uniform globally, the company is evaluating more India-friendly pricing over time.Looking ahead, Jha believes India is well placed to build globally competitive AI application companies even as foundation models remain dominated by larger global players.“I think it’s definitely possible. India can build AI companies for the world, especially on the application side,” he said.He added that Emergent expects to achieve profitability “very soon” and sees the next phase of AI being driven by agentic software that automates a significant share of knowledge work.Published on July 15, 2026
