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The AI-managed software development platform continues to rake in investment dollars from around the world.

This week Builder.ai announced that it had secured an investment of over $250 million (€234 billion) in Series D funding led by Qatar Investment Authority (QIA). This latest round takes the total amount raised by the company to over $450 million. It brings with it an up to 1.8x increase in its valuation.

Combining automation with “talented humans”

Builder.ai stormed onto the scene in 2016, offering both small and larger business the ability to build a web or native mobile app in a modular fashion. It uses what the company calls “an assembly line of reusable parts”. It offers non-coders the ability to create “custom software with unlimited flexibility”, and uses AI to speed up the process. The result is that app development becomes “faster and 70% more affordable”, according to the company.

The Builder.ai process breaks software down into “reusable Lego-like features”. The company combines these with customization from its “managed expert network” of designers and developers.

Much of the Builder.ai customer experience takes place around Natasha, an AI Project Manager that uses machine learning algorithms to recommend the features a customer needs, based on the type of app they are building.

A synergistic partnership with Microsoft

Builder.ai has established partnerships with JP Morgan & Chase, Etisalat UAE and other technology and financial enterprises, and earlier this month the company announced a partnership with Microsoft that included a (non disclosed) equity deal.

Microsoft, who is doubling its AI investment after having invested millions in OpenAI, plans to integrate Builder.ai’s software assembly line across Azure OpenAI Service and other Azure Cognitive Services. Microsoft will also offer native integration of Natasha, the AI product manager, within the Microsoft Teams store.

Builder.ai will also enhance Natasha by leveraging Microsoft’s OpenAI algorithms to make it sound more human, the company told CNBC.

Builder.ai was in the 2023 Fast Company list of Most Innovative Companies and winner of the 2022 Europas “Scale Up of the Year.” This latest round of funding, combined with the Microsoft deal, will no doubt propel the company to new heights in the coming year as well.