Melbourne software company Buildkite raised $21 million through a convertible note in January 2026, a round that only became public in September when its FY25 accounts were lodged with ASIC, Capital Brief reported.
The accounts show a business under pressure just before a sharp lift in demand. Buildkite spent more than $50 million on staff and hosting in FY25 to bring in $43.2 million of revenue. Months later it told job candidates that customer workloads had doubled in three months, driven by AI coding tools that produce far more code than human engineers.
What Buildkite does
Buildkite runs continuous integration and delivery pipelines, the automated testing that checks every software change before it ships. Its customers include OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, Uber, Airbnb and Canva. Buildkite runs those tests on the customer’s own machines rather than on someone else’s cloud.
The company was founded in 2013 by Keith Pitt and Lachlan Donald. Pitt has since stepped down as chief executive and Kevin Gounden now holds the role, while Donald has returned as chief technology officer. Buildkite previously raised $28 million in 2020 at a reported valuation of $200 million.
The numbers
According to the FY25 accounts, revenue rose 16% to $43.2 million. Employee costs were $39.1 million and hosting was $11.3 million. The net loss more than doubled to $28.4 million, and cash fell from $33.7 million to $10.1 million. The terms and investors in the January convertible note were not disclosed.
The AI coding effect
In a May 2026 job advertisement, Buildkite said workloads had doubled over three months and that customers expected to need 5 to 10 times more capacity across 2026. The reason is the spread of AI coding agents, which generate code at a volume no human team could match. Every one of those changes still has to be built and tested before it reaches production, and that work lands on platforms like Buildkite.
For testing infrastructure, more machine-written code means more work, not less, though the jump in usage also brings higher hosting and staffing costs.
Jack’s take
These shifts take years, not months, and years is plenty of time to change what a company sells. Buildkite has been around since 2013 and has already outlived a few things that were meant to replace it. If agents keep writing more code, the testing layer gets busier, not quieter. The cash position is the part I would watch.