Almost nine years ago, Jyoti Bansal sold AppDynamics to Cisco for $3.7 billion just as the software startup was set to go public.

Bansal’s latest venture, Harness, is now worth substantially more than that, after raking in $200 million in fresh capital at a $5.5 billion valuation in a funding round led by Goldman Sachs.

Harness’ technology helps companies manage and monitor code that’s produced with the help of artificial intelligence, making sure it doesn’t break, create security vulnerabilities or trigger cost overruns. It’s a compliment to the so-called vibe coding trend that’s taken off with the boom in generative AI.

In recent months, venture capitalists have poured money into startups such as Cursor, Lovable and most recently Kilo Code that sell subscriptions for tools for directing AI models to write and update software. Harness’ software draws on models from Anthropic and OpenAI.

Earlier this year, Bansal bolstered Harness’ cybersecurity chops by merging the startup with Traceable, another company he co-founded. The combined company, based in San Francisco, has a total of about 1,300 employees.

Harness is on track to exceed its goal of over $250 million in annualized revenue, growing more than 50% year over year, Bansal said. That makes it larger than AppDynamics at the time it was acquired by Cisco.

Bansal is aiming for a different outcome this time.

“I’m a believer that at the right market timing, we want to operate as a public company, so we can build for the long term,” Bansal said.

In addition to the funding round, Harness is also planning a $40 million tender offer to provide some liquidity to longstanding employees.

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