Lightspeed, Prosus back Mukund Jha's AI startup Emergent with $23 million in Series A round

Co-Founders of Emergent Mukund Jha and Madhav Jha

Amid a surge in AI-powered tools changing the world of software creation and development, Emergent, an AI startup co-founded by twins Mukund and Madhav Jha, has raised $23 million in a Series A round led by Lightspeed, with participation from Prosus Ventures, Together Fund, and Y Combinator.

Angel investors Jeff Dean, Devendra Chaplot, and Balaji Srinivasan also participated in the round. The latest funding brings Emergent’s total capital raised to $30 million, including a previous $7 million seed round.

Emergent, which has offices in San Francisco and Bengaluru, plans to use the fresh capital to expand its team, deepen research into AI coding agents, and scale its platform globally.

Who are the founders?

Co-founder and CEO Mukund Jha is a Columbia Engineering graduate and former Google engineer who had also co-founded the startup Dunzo.  His brother Madhav Jha is an ex-Amazon AI scientist and has worked as the Machine Learning Engineer at Dropbox before starting Emergent.

“Emergent addresses the technical friction of starting or growing a business. Anyone can now bring their vision to life, no matter how complex, at a fraction of the time and cost," Mukund Jha told Moneycontrol in an interaction.

What does Emergent do?

The startup, which launched three months ago, offers an AI-powered app builder that enables users to create production-ready web and mobile apps without writing code.

The platform handles backend infrastructure, logins, payments, deployment, and scaling, making it suitable for individuals, solopreneurs, and small business owners.

Emergent says it has already reached $15 million in annual recurring revenue and serves over one million users who have built more than 1.5 million apps globally.

"It felt like a mission to automate coding as a challenge. We started looking at that problem almost three months back. Since then, we've been growing rapidly, with a lot of deep user love. It feels like a new revolution is coming where we can enable a billion people to build whatever they dream of," Jha said.

Emergent Vs their competitors

When asked how Emergent differs from platforms like Replit or Lovable, Jha explained, “Those platforms largely stop at a front-end prototype. We provide a full-stack application that can be launched, monetised, and deployed. Everything is packaged in one platform, front-end, backend, database, integrations.”

Emergent focuses on non-developers.

"Other platforms target developers. Our platform is built for non-developers with no coding background. We abstract all software complexity and autonomously build apps for users," Jha said.

In the competitive landscape of AI-powered software development platforms, Emergent faces competition from both Indian and U.S.-based companies.  Startups such as Replit and Cursor and Lovable are developing AI tools for developers.

What is Emergent's monetisation plan?

The company monetises through subscription plans ranging from $20 to $200 per month, with additional deployment fees. Users span 180 countries, with 20% in India and the rest in the US, UK, and Europe.

Jha said the goal is ambitious: “We want to enable a billion people to build on Emergent.”

Investors race to back AI startups

Investors are racing to back early-stage AI startups, with over a dozen prepping seed rounds.

Peak XV eyes Claim Health, Cubic, Theta Software, Cua, and Coinvent AI; Elevation Capital is in talks with ScalarField, Sookti AI, and Synth Bio; and Kalaari, BoldCap, and Zeropearl target SuperMemory, Superbryn, Sherlocks AI, and Affluense AI.

Most sub-$5 million bets focus on AI agents or development tools, with companion AI, human-like friends or caregivers, emerging as a hot trend.

The surge in funding reflects growing confidence in AI’s potential to disrupt traditional business models, from software development to healthcare and logistics.

"Emergent collapses the complexity of software into a single button anyone can press to ship, scale, earn and Lightspeed is proud to back them on this exciting journey," explained Hemant Mohapatra, Partner at Lightspeed.