Coder Secures $90M Series C Led by KKR to Advance Secure Enterprise AI Development
NEW YORK and AUSTIN, Texas, April 01, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Coder, a leader in AI development infrastructure, today announced a $90 million Series C led by funds managed by KKR, a leading global investment firm, with participation from Qube Research & Technologies (QRT), Uncork Capital, and other existing investors. The investment underscores a shared conviction that cloud-based developer infrastructure will play a critical role in enabling enterprises to securely build and deploy software at scale.
Founded in 2017 in Austin, Texas, Coder provides a centralized, secure platform where enterprises can build and run software development environments in the cloud, replacing fragmented, local setups with standardized, customer-controlled workspaces. By enabling both developers and AI coding tools to operate within the same governed infrastructure, Coder helps organizations improve consistency, accelerate onboarding, and maintain control over how software is built.
"We chose to partner with customers KKR and QRT in this round because they have the clearest view of how AI evolves software development," said Rob Whiteley, CEO of Coder. "They're using Coder to bring consistency and security for every enterprise user to leverage the latest technologies like Claude Code, Cursor, and OpenClaw. Together, we are rearchitecting the foundation for how enterprise software is built."
"Software development is undergoing a fundamental shift, driven by the move to the cloud and the rapid adoption of AI, with more than 80% of enterprise developers today using or planning to use coding agents in their daily workflows," said Ben Pederson, Managing Director at KKR. "As enterprises scale the use of AI in development, they need infrastructure that allows that work to happen in a secure, standardized, and repeatable way. We believe Coder is well positioned to serve as the foundational platform for this next generation of software development."
The company will use the funding to support platform innovation — with a focus on supporting enterprise AI workflows and strengthening governance capabilities — and to scale its presence in Europe, Asia, and North America to meet demand for Coder.
The new model for enterprise development
Customers define what successful AI adoption looks like in practice: balancing speed with control, and experimentation with the ability to scale. This moment represents an opportunity to establish a new standard for how to safely and easily access corporate-approved coding tools. Coder automates agentic provisioning, eliminating the need for users to install agents, connect LLMs, provision tools and MCP servers, and plumb libraries, source code repositories, and infrastructure. All of that fades to infrastructure- and policy-as-code that users don't have to think about.
At KKR, Coder was rolled out to more than 500 engineers as part of a broader effort to align development environments and introduce AI in a governed way. Since first deploying Coder a year ago, the firm has moved from no AI-assisted code to more than half of commits taking place within Coder-managed environments. Based on this initial success, KKR plans to roll out coding tools to many additional functions. The investment will be made primarily through KKR's Next Generation Technology Growth Fund III.
"Coder has fundamentally changed how we approach software development at KKR, particularly as we integrate AI into our workflows," said Ruchir Swarup, Chief Information Officer at KKR. "By standardizing development environments and embedding governance directly into the process, we've been able to scale the use of AI tools in a secure and controlled way. This has improved consistency across teams, accelerated onboarding, and increased developer productivity and software velocity. We're now extending these capabilities beyond engineering to analysts, data scientists, and other users."
Customer-investor QRT experienced similar success. QRT has rolled Coder out to half of its over 2,000 employees, including a mix of software engineers, data scientists, and analysts. Coder is a critical component of how these employees use agentic tooling.
"Deploying agentic AI at our scale requires infrastructure that doesn't compromise on governance," said Zohar Melamed, Head of Developer Experience at QRT. "Coder gives us the ability to audit every LLM request, control access across our global infrastructure, and maintain strict compliance while dramatically compressing deployment timelines."
Growth led by customer expansion
Coder initially gained traction by helping enterprises bring structure, safety and control to how software is built. As the scope of software development expands to include AI tools and agents, that foundation is used to support a broader set of workflows across the organization.
Coder's growth is accelerating alongside this shift. The company has delivered 300% year-over-year bookings growth over the past four quarters, 45% quarter-over-quarter growth in Q1, and 148% year-over-year growth in Q1. This momentum is driven by expansion within the existing customer base, with net dollar retention at 184%. As enterprises standardize development and adopt AI workflows, Coder consistently expands across teams and use cases, reinforcing its role as a core part of the development stack.
Latham & Watkins LLP served as legal advisor to KKR & Co. Inc.
Visit the company blog to learn more about Coder's vision for the foundation of safe agentic development.
About Coder
Coder is the leading platform for AI development Infrastructure, enabling enterprises to securely run human and AI-driven development workflows in consistent, governed environments. Coder provides self-hosted, agent-ready workspaces that unify developer productivity and platform governance. With Coder, enterprises can confidently evolve from human-only development to AI-assisted and autonomous workflows—without sacrificing security, compliance, or performance. Learn more at coder.com.
About KKR
KKR is a leading global investment firm that offers alternative asset management as well as capital markets and insurance solutions. KKR aims to generate attractive investment returns by following a patient and disciplined investment approach, employing world-class people, and supporting growth in its portfolio companies and communities. KKR sponsors investment funds that invest in private equity, credit and real assets and has strategic partners that manage hedge funds. KKR's insurance subsidiaries offer retirement, life and reinsurance products under the management of Global Atlantic Financial Group. References to KKR's investments may include the activities of its sponsored funds and insurance subsidiaries. For additional information about KKR & Co. Inc. (NYSE:KKR), please visit KKR's website at www.kkr.com. For additional information about Global Atlantic Financial Group, please visit Global Atlantic Financial Group's website at www.globalatlantic.com.
Media Contacts
KKR:
Brooke Rustad or Jenn Bernstein
[email protected]
Coder:
Jennifer Tanner
Look Left Marketing
[email protected]
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/3d827902-71d4-4d22-8ecd-e9527c83905b
