Top AI Product

There’s a lot of noise in the AI coding space right now. Every other startup claims they can write code for you, autocomplete your functions, or “vibe code” an entire app into existence. But [Code Metal](https://www.codemetal.ai/) is doing something fundamentally different — and the market clearly agrees, because this company just went from a $250M valuation to $1.25B in about three months. That’s a 5x jump. In this economy.

The [Series B announcement](https://siliconangle.com/2026/02/20/ai-code-translation-startup-code-metal-reels-125m-1-25b-valuation/) dropped on SiliconANGLE earlier this week and immediately got people talking. Salesforce Ventures led the $125M round, with Accel, B Capital, and defense contractor RTX also putting money in. When a weapons manufacturer is both your investor and your customer, you know you’re solving a real problem.

So what does Code Metal actually do? It translates code between programming languages — think legacy COBOL or Ada getting converted into modern Rust or C++ — and then uses formal verification to mathematically prove the translated code behaves identically to the original. That second part is the key. Anyone can throw code at an LLM and get a rough translation back. But when you’re working on avionics software or defense systems, “roughly correct” doesn’t cut it. You need guarantees, and Code Metal’s neuro-symbolic approach actually provides them.

Their customer list reads like a defense industry who’s-who: the U.S. Air Force, RTX, L3Harris, Toshiba, and Bosch. Founded by Peter Morales in 2023, the company is reportedly already profitable — which is almost unheard of for a startup raising at this stage. They also brought on Ryan Aytay, the former CEO of Tableau, as President and COO, which signals they’re gearing up for serious scale.

What I find most interesting is the timing. Everyone’s obsessed with AI code generation right now, but Code Metal is betting that code *translation and verification* is the bigger opportunity. For industries sitting on millions of lines of legacy code that absolutely cannot break, that bet looks pretty smart. Keep an eye on this one.