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Vercel’s AI Breakthrough: $300M Raise Propels Developer Platform to $9.3B Valuation
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Vercel’s AI Breakthrough: $300M Raise Propels Developer Platform to $9.3B Valuation

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1 October 2025
  • Series F Funding: Vercel announced a $300 million Series F round, lifting its valuation to $9.3 billion [1] [2]. The round was co-led by Accel and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC.
  • New Investors: New backers include BlackRock, StepStone, Khosla Ventures, Schroders, Adams Street Partners and General Catalyst (existing investors like Salesforce Ventures and Tiger Global also participated) [3] [4]. A separate $300M secondary tender offer for employees and early backers will close next month.
  • Rapid Growth: Vercel’s platform has seen explosive growth – its user base doubled over the past year and revenue jumped 82% year-on-year [5]. The company now serves everyone from indie developers to global brands.
  • AI-Driven Platform: Vercel is positioning itself as an “AI-native” cloud for developers. Its AI Cloud includes an open-source AI SDK (60+ models, 3+ million weekly downloads) and its AI development agent v0 (3.5 million users) [6]. A mobile version of v0 is in beta (10K on the waitlist) to let developers build apps using voice and camera inputs [7].
  • Major Clients: Top tech and retail names rely on Vercel. Customers include OpenAI, Anthropic, PayPal, Nike, Walmart, Supreme and others [8] [9]. Global brands like AT&T, Hulu, Nike, Target and Walmart use Vercel’s open-source Next.js framework for front-end development [10].
  • Funds Usage: The fresh capital will expand Vercel’s AI Cloud infrastructure – beefing up security, gateways, and sandboxing – and scale its AI agent v0 [11] [12]. Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch says the aim is to provide a “secure, scalable foundation” as enterprises shift from web pages to AI “agents” in their workflows [13] [14].

$300M Series F Round and $9.3B Valuation

In late September 2025 Vercel announced a blockbuster Series F funding round that catapults the startup to a $9.3 billion valuation [15] [16]. The $300 million infusion was oversubscribed and co-led by VC firm Accel and Singapore’s GIC (Global Investment Corporation) [17] [18]. Joining the round were heavyweight asset managers and funds — BlackRock, StepStone, Khosla Ventures, Schroders, Adams Street Partners and General Catalyst — alongside earlier backers (Salesforce Ventures, Tiger Global, GV, etc.) [19] [20]. Vercel also launched a roughly $300 million secondary tender for employees and early investors, which is slated to close in November [21] [22].

Vercel’s CEO Guillermo Rauch noted that the funding comes at “the biggest year in Vercel’s history” [23]. In a press release he said the fresh capital “accelerates our ability to provide the secure, scalable foundation enterprises need as AI agents become integral to their workflows” [24]. In other words, investors have effectively crowned Vercel as a leader in so-called “AI-native” development platforms. The round underscores how quickly Vercel’s fortunes have risen: just 16 months earlier, a Series E had valued Vercel at $3.25 billion [25]. In less than two years Vercel’s valuation nearly tripled, reflecting surging demand for its tools.

AI Cloud and “v0” — Vercel’s AI-First Strategy

Originally known as a frontend-hosting service (it’s the company behind the popular Next.js framework), Vercel is now rebranding itself around generative AI and automation. The company is building an AI Cloud platform designed specifically for AI-driven apps. This includes a unified AI SDK that taps into over 60 large language and model APIs (e.g. from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Cohere, etc.) [26] [27]. Rauch writes that “just like React brought accessibility to pages, the AI SDK is bringing accessibility to tokens” [28], enabling developers to integrate diverse AI models with one toolkit.

At the heart of Vercel’s AI suite is v0, an AI-based “coding assistant” or agent. V0 can take natural language prompts and auto-generate front-end and full-stack code. (In a 2024 Reuters interview, Rauch described v0 as using generative AI to build user interfaces from text descriptions — “the goal of v0 is to enable companies to instantly generate personalized websites” [29].) Today, v0 boasts about 3.5 million users [30]. Vercel says that enterprise accounts now make up over 50% of v0’s revenue, highlighting strong adoption by corporate users [31]. The company plans to expand v0’s infrastructure and security features so that it can safely assist developers across the organization. In fact, a mobile version of v0 is already in public beta (with 10K+ on the waitlist); this app lets developers “build at the speed of sound” by speaking or snapping pictures to generate app code on the go [32] [33].

Vercel is also launching other AI-native features. It recently debuted an AI code review agent (in beta) that automatically scans codebases for issues and suggests fixes [34]. And its AI infrastructure includes a Gateway and Sandbox environment for safely running untrusted AI code. Security has become a core focus: as GIC notes, with trends like “vibecoding” (voice-driven coding) on the rise, Vercel aims to “include built-in security for running untrusted code, managing AI workflows, and protecting against emerging AI-driven threats” [35]. In short, Vercel is betting that the future of web development is agentic and AI-powered. As Rauch puts it on Vercel’s blog, “We used to build pages, and now we’re going to build agents” [36].

Explosive Growth and Blue-Chip Clients

The funding news comes after a year of strong performance. Vercel reports its user base doubled in the last 12 months, and its annual revenue grew 82% [37] [38]. Many of the world’s largest companies are now on Vercel’s platform. For example, clients range from pure AI players like OpenAI and Anthropic to major retailers and brands like Nike, PayPal, Walmart, Supreme, AT&T, and Under Armour [39] [40]. These customers leverage Vercel’s infrastructure to build both traditional websites (via Next.js) and new AI-enabled applications.

Next.js — the React-based framework created and maintained by Vercel — continues to see enormous adoption. Reuters noted in May 2024 that over 1 million developers use Next.js every month, and downloads recently spiked to 500+ million annually [41] [42]. Vercel’s investor Dan Levine (Accel) emphasizes that Next.js remains a “go-to platform” for web development even as the company shifts to AI [43]. In fact, he argues that Vercel’s focus on “security, performance and design excellence” will enable it to “define the future of how work gets done” in an AI-driven era [44].

The robust metrics help explain why investors piled in. Tech analysts say Vercel’s focus on a developer-friendly AI stack differentiates it from general cloud providers. As one AI technology overview notes, platforms that make AI tools “fast, reliable, and accessible” to developers are now “stealing the spotlight” [45]. In other words, Vercel is at the intersection of two hot trends: the rise of generative AI and the continuing importance of modern web infrastructure.

Broader Trend: AI Tooling Frenzy

Vercel’s big funding round mirrors a broader surge in “AI developer” platforms. For instance, Replit (a cloud coding platform) raised $250M in September 2025 at a $3.0B valuation [46], while Cursor and Cognition (code-generation startups) recently fetched multibillion-dollar valuations [47] [48]. Investors are banking on these companies to capture the next wave of productivity gains. As one market observer put it, as businesses worldwide “put AI at the center of their digital transformation,” demand is rising for “AI-friendly solutions” that can be embedded into software [49]. Vercel’s investors explicitly signaled this bet: “Accel and GIC co-led the round as Vercel becomes the go-to platform for building AI-native applications and agents at enterprise scale,” the GIC press release stated [50].

Expert Commentary and Outlook

Industry experts see Vercel’s new funding as validation of its strategy. Accel partner Dan Levine commented: “Vercel changed how developers work, and now v0 is extending that transformation to every corner of the enterprise” [51]. Vercel’s founder Rauch echoed this vision: “For a decade, Vercel has been the go-to platform for web development, and as AI transforms applications, we’ve evolved our infrastructure to match,” he said [52]. In other words, investors and insiders believe Vercel is well-positioned to lead in the AI-native web era.

Looking ahead, the company plans to double down on enterprise features and security, believing there must be “a cloud that’s designed and purpose-built for AI applications” [53]. The new hires in Vercel’s leadership (a former Stripe executive as COO, a capital-markets AI lead as product head, etc.) also point to a push into larger enterprises. If Vercel can maintain its rapid growth and keep innovating, its $9.3B valuation may not be just hype — it could reflect a genuinely new chapter for how software is built in the AI age.

Sources: Financial news outlets and company announcements from Reuters, Bloomberg, Businesswire and SiliconANGLE, including direct quotes from Vercel’s CEO and investor Accel [54] [55] [56] [57], along with recent market analyses [58] [59]. All figures and quotes are drawn from these reports.

References

1. www.reuters.com, 2. www.bloomberg.com, 3. www.bloomberg.com, 4. www.gic.com.sg, 5. www.reuters.com, 6. www.gic.com.sg, 7. www.gic.com.sg, 8. www.reuters.com, 9. www.gic.com.sg, 10. www.gic.com.sg, 11. www.gic.com.sg, 12. www.businesswire.com, 13. www.businesswire.com, 14. vercel.com, 15. www.reuters.com, 16. www.bloomberg.com, 17. www.reuters.com, 18. www.bloomberg.com, 19. www.bloomberg.com, 20. www.gic.com.sg, 21. www.reuters.com, 22. www.gic.com.sg, 23. vercel.com, 24. www.businesswire.com, 25. www.reuters.com, 26. siliconangle.com, 27. vercel.com, 28. vercel.com, 29. www.reuters.com, 30. www.gic.com.sg, 31. www.gic.com.sg, 32. www.gic.com.sg, 33. vercel.com, 34. siliconangle.com, 35. www.gic.com.sg, 36. vercel.com, 37. www.reuters.com, 38. www.gic.com.sg, 39. www.reuters.com, 40. www.gic.com.sg, 41. www.reuters.com, 42. vercel.com, 43. www.gic.com.sg, 44. www.gic.com.sg, 45. finimize.com, 46. www.reuters.com, 47. www.reuters.com, 48. www.reuters.com, 49. finimize.com, 50. www.gic.com.sg, 51. www.gic.com.sg, 52. www.businesswire.com, 53. vercel.com, 54. www.reuters.com, 55. www.businesswire.com, 56. www.gic.com.sg, 57. vercel.com, 58. www.reuters.com, 59. finimize.com

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