Code Metal raises $125M Series B to automate translation of AI code into edge-optimized hardware

Summary

Code Metal, a two-year-old company that automates the translation of AI-generated software into edge-optimized hardware, announces a $125M Series B and the hire of former Tableau CEO Ryan Aay as President and COO.

CEO Peter Morales built the company around a problem he first encountered in defense: taking high-level software and compiling it down to constrained, mission-critical hardware. He worked on AI algorithms for the F-35 under DARPA's adaptive radar countermeasures program, then moved to MIT Lincoln Laboratory as a founding member of its AI technology group, before joining Microsoft to work on HoloLens. The same bottleneck kept appearing — pushing state-of-the-art algorithms onto real hardware was painful whether the customer was the Pentagon or a consumer electronics team.

The product pitch is that AI-generated code is exploding, but LLMs are stochastic and cannot reliably verify themselves. Code Metal layers formal verification methods on top of AI tooling to guarantee that what gets deployed to hardware is functionally identical to what was specified — not just plausible output. Morales describes it as a "high code" shop, not low-code or no-code, focused on the gap between MVP and production in mission-critical industries.

Morales lays out three commercial wedges:

• Rapid hardware deployment — letting software teams act like vertically integrated hardware companies by pushing directly to target systems
• Code portability — translating code written for one chip to run on another, which he illustrates with the Army's problem of having Nvidia GPU code it can no longer supply-chain its way out of
• Legacy modernization — wrapping and updating entrenched codebases that no one has been willing to touch

The funding trajectory has been fast. J2 Ventures led the pre-seed, Shield Capital came in for the seed given the dual-use mission, and Excel joined as growth became visible. The Series B closes roughly two years after founding.

Aay's hire signals a shift from engineering-led sales to enterprise go-to-market. He brings relationships with large technology buyers — Morales namedrops Nvidia-scale partnerships — at a moment when Code Metal is moving toward bigger institutional clients. On the commercial side, Laura Shen, who came from the National Security Council with a background at Uber, had been Morales's primary selling partner before the team scaled.