Jyoti Bansal, co-founder and CEO of Harness, speaks at the company’s unscripted conference in London on September 25, 2025.
harness
Almost nine years ago, Jyoti Bansal sold AppDynamics to: Cisco When the software startup was planning to go public, it traded for $3.7 billion.
Bansal’s latest venture, Harness, is now worth significantly more than that after raising $200 million in fresh capital at a valuation of $5.5 billion in a funding round led by Bansal. goldman sachs.
Harness’ technology helps companies manage and monitor code generated with the help of artificial intelligence to ensure it does not become corrupted, create security vulnerabilities, or cause cost overruns. This is a nod to the so-called vibe coding trend that started with the boom in generative AI.
In recent months, venture capitalists have poured money into startups like Cursor, Lovable, and most recently Kilo Code, which sells subscriptions to tools for instructing AI models to create and update software. Harness’ software utilizes models from Anthropic and OpenAI.
Earlier this year, Mr. Bansal strengthened Mr. Harness’ cybersecurity capabilities by merging with Traceable, another company he co-founded. The combined company will be headquartered in San Francisco and have approximately 1,300 total employees.
Bansal said Harness is on track to achieve its goal of more than $250 million in annual sales, with growth of more than 50% year over year. This makes AppDynamics larger than it was when it was acquired by Cisco.
Bansal is aiming for a different result this time.
“We would like to operate as a listed company so that we can build the business over the long term, given the right market timing,” Bansal said.
In addition to the funding round, Harness is also planning a $40 million tender offer to provide liquidity to long-time employees.
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