{"id":292366,"date":"2026-02-19T22:11:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T22:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/292366\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T22:11:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T22:11:09","slug":"code-metal-raises-125-million-to-rewrite-the-defense-industrys-code-with-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/292366\/","title":{"rendered":"Code Metal Raises $125 Million to Rewrite the Defense Industry\u2019s Code With AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Code Metal, a Boston-based startup that uses AI to write code and translate it into other programming languages, just closed a $125 million Series B funding round from new and existing investors. The news comes just a few months after the startup raised $36 million in series A financing led by Accel.<\/p>\n

Code Metal is part of a new wave of startups aiming to modernize the tech industry by using AI to generate code and translate it across programming languages. One of the questions that persists about AI-assisted code, though, is whether the output is any good\u2014and what the consequences might be if it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n

Over the past two years companies like Antithesis, Code Rabbit, Synthesized, Theorem, and Harness have all secured millions in backing from venture capitalists for their approaches to automating, validating, testing, and securing AI-generated code. These startups are selling the \u201cpicks and shovels\u201d of the AI gold rush\u2014tech tools that serve a larger industry. While some of the methodologies behind their technology remain unproven, investors are willing to gamble that at least a few will pan out.<\/p>\n

Code Metal, which was founded in 2023, has focused its efforts on code translation and code verification for the defense industry. It boasts L3Harris, RTX (formerly known as Raytheon), and the US Air Force as early customers. The startup is also working with Japanese electronics company Toshiba and says it\u2019s in talks with a large chip company to work on code portability across chip platforms, though the company declined to say which one.<\/p>\n

The startup\u2019s software platform translates code from high-level programming languages like Python, Julia, Matlab, and C++ to lower-level languages or code that runs on specific hardware, like Rust, VHDL, and chip-specific languages like Nvidia\u2019s CUDA.<\/p>\n

Code Metal CEO Peter Morales, who previously worked at Microsoft and the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, says the market is starting to recognize \u201cthe big tentpole problems\u201d in an industry that could, in the not-so-distant future, be propped up by AI-generated code. One of those problems is porting old code into new applications. If a government agency or defense contractor needs coding work done quickly, Morales says, but only has access to engineers who have specialized in a legacy programming language, that slows everyone down.<\/p>\n

Morales cites a recent post on X<\/a> from well-known AI researcher Andrej Karpathy, who observed the \u201crising momentum behind porting C to Rust,\u201d among other things. Karpathy concluded: \u201cIt feels likely that we\u2019ll end up rewriting large fractions of all software ever written many times over.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is all of what we do in one tweet,\u201d Morales says.<\/p>\n

One of Code Metal\u2019s investors, Yan-David Erlich, a general partner at B Capital, says the reality is that some of the code that controls essential communications infrastructure, and even satellites, \u201cis old, it\u2019s crufty, it\u2019s written in programming languages that people might not use anymore. It needs to be modernized.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut in the course of translation,\u201d Erlich added, \u201cyou might be inserting bugs\u2014which is catastrophically problematic.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where Code Metal says its proprietary tech comes in. Morales says that at each step of translation, Code Metal\u2019s software generates a series of test harnesses\u2014a virtual container of data and tools\u2014that evaluate the code and show customers along the way that it\u2019s working. When asked about Code Metal\u2019s error rate for translation, Morales says it depends largely on how difficult the code conversion is, but that for the pipelines Code Metal currently runs, \u201cthere\u2019s no way to generate an error. The software will just say, \u2018There\u2019s no solution for this\u2019 if we can\u2019t complete the translation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The startup is skittish about sharing too many details about its methodology. One element of the business it\u2019s not shying away from talking about, however, is its approach to pricing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Code Metal, a Boston-based startup that uses AI to write code and translate it into other programming languages,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,4037,12695,111,139,69,7718,1046,145,1287],"class_list":{"0":"post-292366","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-coding","12":"tag-defense","13":"tag-new-zealand","14":"tag-newzealand","15":"tag-nz","16":"tag-silicon-valley","17":"tag-startups","18":"tag-technology","19":"tag-venture-capital"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}