- Chamath Palihapitiya returns as CEO for the first time since leaving Facebook in 2011, leading 8090, which has raised $135 million in Series A funding led by Salesforce Ventures.
- All 4 of his All-In Podcast co-hosts, David Sacks, David Friedberg, and Jason Calacanis, backed the round through their own funds.
- 8090’s platform coordinates human developers and AI agents to produce auditable, production-grade code for regulated industries including healthcare, financial services, and the US federal government.
Chamath Palihapitiya has spent 14 years telling other people how to build companies. Now he is building one himself. The Silicon Valley investor, podcast co-host, and self-described SPAC King has raised $135 million in Series A funding for 8090, a Menlo Park AI-native enterprise software startup, and has stepped in as its chief executive, his first full-time operating role since leaving Facebook in 2011.
Who is he?
Born in Sri Lanka and raised in Canada, Palihapitiya studied electrical engineering at the University of Waterloo before early roles at AOL and Winamp. He joined Facebook in 2007 as VP of User Growth, becoming the longest-tenured member of its original senior executive team, steering the platform from roughly 15 million users to hundreds of millions before leaving in 2011, a year before Facebook crossed the billion-user mark.
He then founded Social Capital, backing Slack, Box, Carta, and Intercom while targeting healthcare, education, and fintech – sectors most of Silicon Valley ignored at the time. Social Capital’s early funds returned over 30% annually.
Palihapitiya’s reputation fractured during the pandemic-era SPAC boom. Between 2019 and 2021, he took Virgin Galactic, Clover Health, Opendoor, and SoFi public through blank-check vehicles. Most lost significant value when rates rose. The “SPAC King” nickname became a liability. He rebuilt his public presence through the All-In Podcast, co-hosted with David Sacks, David Friedberg, and Jason Calacanis, which has since become one of Silicon Valley’s most influential media properties.
Why raise $135M now?
Palihapitiya’s thesis is that large regulated enterprises have long resisted traditional software, and that AI is the first technology capable of changing that. His vision is not on code generation speed but on governance: making AI-written code auditable and explainable enough for industries that cannot tolerate failure.
Founded in January 2024, 8090 builds Software Factory, a platform that coordinates human developers and AI agents to produce production-grade code for regulated industries including healthcare, insurance, aerospace, financial services, and the US federal government.
Named customers include EY, Dompé, AdaptHealth, and Palmetto. The differentiator is auditability, the ability to show a regulator exactly what the AI did and why.
“Demand is accelerating rapidly. This capital goes toward two things: the people we need to hire and the compute and infrastructure to keep the platform reliable at scale,” said Chamath.
Who backed it and why that matters
The round was led by Salesforce Ventures, which has direct commercial reasons to watch AI-native software delivery – Salesforce is one of the world’s largest enterprise software vendors.
Alongside it: Jeffrey Katzenberg‘s WndrCo, David Sacks’ Craft Ventures, David Friedberg’s The Production Board, and Jason Calacanis’ Launch, all 4 All-In co-hosts backing their podcast partner’s first operating bet. Angels including Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora and Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo also joined.
The market and the competition
The AI coding assistant market is valued at roughly $12.8 billion in 2026, growing over 60% year-on-year. GitHub Copilot leads by user count. Cursor is valued at near $29.3 billion following SpaceX’s acquisition announcement. Cognition’s Devin has raised over $1 billion at a $26 billion valuation on enterprise deployments at Citi, Mercedes-Benz, and the US Army.
All 3 compete on speed. 8090 is competing on governance, arguing that the harder problem in enterprise AI is not writing code quickly but making it safe enough for a bank or hospital to trust.
An investor with a mixed record in public markets is now personally accountable for a product that regulated enterprises cannot afford to fail. His co-hosts have put their capital behind that bet. Whether the enterprises themselves agree is the question this round cannot yet answer.
