Chamath Palihapitiya’s 8090 raises $135 million to build AI software platform

8090 raised $135 million in a Series A and named founder Chamath Palihapitiya as its chief executive, a sign that investors are still willing to place large bets on AI coding startups even as the field gets crowded. The financing was led by Salesforce Ventures, with WNDR, Craft Ventures, The Production Board and LAUNCH also taking part, alongside angel backers including Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora, Cliff Robbins, Adam D’Angelo, Shyam Ravindran, Abhi Arun and Thomas Laffont.

The company is pitching itself as an AI-native software development platform for regulated enterprises, and that positioning is what separates it from the more generic code-generation wave. Its flagship product, Software Factory, is designed to move from business intent to production code while keeping leaders in control of the process, with audit trails, visibility and governance built in. That emphasis matters in sectors where software mistakes can create compliance risk, not just engineering rework.

EY US has already become the clearest proof point. On March 18, 2026, EY US launched EY.ai Product Development Lifecycle, powered by 8090’s Software Factory, and said it would be rolled out to tens of thousands of consultants across the firm. EY described the system as a way to move beyond slow, costly and failure-prone software development, and said its digital engineering teams were using it to produce faster and more cost-efficient results. Public references tied to 8090 also connect the company to Dompé, AdaptHealth and Palmetto, signaling an early push into enterprise use cases with heavy regulatory exposure.

Palihapitiya’s own pitch is shaped by a hard look at the economics of AI development. In March 2026, he said 8090’s AI costs had more than tripled since November 2025 and could exceed $10 million a year, with AWS inference costs, Cursor and Anthropic among the main drivers. He said the company needed to move off Cursor because Claude Code was cheaper, a reminder that the economics of building AI products can be as punishing as the competition to sell them.

That tension helps explain why 8090 is leaning so hard into workflow control and auditability rather than raw code output. It also helps explain why investors keep writing huge checks: Palihapitiya brings the brand, the capital network and the enterprise narrative, not just another coding tool. He is also the founder and CEO of Social Capital, a former Facebook senior executive, and his background, from Sri Lanka to Canada to Silicon Valley, gives 8090 a founder profile that is as visible as the product itself.