Rocket.new Raises $15M Seed to Scale AI Vibe-Coding Platform

Indian start up Rocket.new announced it had raised $15 million in a seed funding round, a striking milestone for a company that only launched its beta platform three months earlier in June. The official announcement came via press release on September 23, and within hours the news was covered widely across tech and start up media, reflecting both investor excitement and the growing global attention on the AI-powered coding space.

The seed round was led by Salesforce Ventures, joined by Accel and Together Fund. Structured as an all-equity deal, the raise signals strong investor confidence in Rocket.new’s model and early growth. In just a few months, the start up has gained more than 400,000 users in 180 countries, secured over 10,000 paid subscribers, and built an annual recurring revenue stream of $4.5 million. Few beta-stage companies manage to convert enthusiasm into tangible revenue so quickly, making Rocket.new’s traction unusual.

Founded in Surat, a city better known for its diamond industry than its start up ecosystem, Rocket.new represents an unexpected origin story in India’s tech landscape. The team is led by CEO Vishal Virani, with co-founders Deepak Dhanak and Rahul Shingala. Before launching Rocket.new, the trio built DhiWise, a developer workflow platform whose data and learnings now serve as part of Rocket.new’s foundation. That experience gave them an advantage in understanding both the frustrations of developers and the technical requirements of building a scalable tool.

Virani explained the company’s philosophy in a recent interview. “We are building the first vibe solution platform, which is not just solving the problem of day one, but what we are focusing on is solving the problem of day two,” he said. The comment highlights a core difference between Rocket.new and its competitors. While others might enable users to spin up quick demos in minutes, Rocket.new wants to ensure that the applications created can be maintained, iterated upon, and deployed at scale.

To achieve this, the platform integrates large language models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google Gemini with its own proprietary systems trained on datasets drawn partly from DhiWise. The result is a slower but more complete generation process. Rocket.new estimates that its first applications take about 25 minutes to produce, compared to three minutes from rival platforms, but the trade-off is higher quality and production readiness. For users trying to build businesses rather than just test concepts, this difference could be decisive.

Since its beta launch, usage has spanned a wide range of industries. About 12 percent of customers are building e-commerce apps, 10 percent focus on fintech, 5 to 6 percent on B2B tools, and 4 to 5 percent on mental health solutions. Roughly half of the projects target mobile apps, while the other half focus on websites. Importantly, the founders say 80 percent of users are creating what they call “serious applications,” signalling that the platform is attracting builders who see Rocket.new as more than a novelty tool.

The funding also underscores Rocket.new’s aggressive revenue ambitions. The company is targeting $20 to $25 million in annual recurring revenue by the end of this year, and $60 to $70 million by June 2026. Its revenue mix is already globally distributed: 26 percent comes from the United States, 15 to 20 percent from Europe, and about 10 percent from India. To strengthen its foothold in its largest market, Rocket.new plans to establish a U.S. headquarters in Palo Alto.

Beyond geography and revenue, the company’s long-term vision is ambitious. The founders want Rocket.new to evolve into a full-fledged “agentic system,” not just a code generator. In their vision, the platform will support the entire lifecycle of product development, from researching competitors and designing products to scaling, deploying, and maintaining them. This ambition positions Rocket.new less as a niche coding assistant and more as an end-to-end partner for entrepreneurs and developers.

The official announcement included a statement from co-founder Deepak Dhanak, who said, “The new funding will help fuel our vision to eliminate the technical barriers that prevent great ideas from becoming a reality.” His words reflect the broader mission of Rocket.new, to lower entry barriers for builders with ideas but limited technical expertise, while also serving experienced developers seeking efficiency.

In just a few months, Rocket.new has gone from launch to becoming one of India’s most talked-about AI startups, with paying customers across the world and a multimillion-dollar revenue base. Its $15 million seed round provides the resources to chase ambitious revenue targets, expand internationally, and pursue its vision of redefining what production-ready application development looks like. If the founders’ confidence and investors’ faith are justified, Rocket.new could soon stand as one of India’s leading contributions to the next era of AI-driven software development.

Despite its early momentum, Rocket.new faces stiff competition in a crowded market of AI coding tools. Rivals boast faster generation times, larger teams, and significant resources. Yet Rocket.new’s emphasis on completeness and usability could help it carve out a defensible niche. Success will depend on whether its slower but more comprehensive approach resonates with developers who prioritize sustainability and scalability over speed.