Builder.ai, a startup working to reduce the amount of time and effort required to build custom software, today announced that it has raised $250 million in funding.

The Series D round was led by the Qatar Investment Authority with participation from Iconiq Capital, Jungle Ventures and Insight Partners. Builder.ai, officially Engineer.ai Corp., has raised a total of $450 million to date. The startup says that the round will increase its valuation by up to 80%.

London-based Builder.ai offers a suite of cloud services designed to streamline software development projects. According to the company, its services reduce the amount of custom code that companies must write to create a new application. Moreover, Builder.ai can host the software that customers develop using its tools to ease infrastructure maintenance.

The first component of its product suite, Studio Rapid, enables companies to develop back-office software such as employee onboarding tools and analytics dashboards. The tool doesn’t require users to write any code. Instead, they can create a new application through a point and click interface.

Another Builder.ai product, Studio Store, focuses on speeding up the development of e-commerce websites. It provides a collection of website templates that companies can quickly adapt to their requirements by uploading custom graphics and product information. It also makes it possible to create an accompanying e-commerce app in as little as two weeks.

For more advanced software projects, the company offers a service called Builder Studio. It allows a company to specify what features its custom application should include and have the software developed by experts from Builder.ai’s network of programmers. A complementary prototyping tool, Builder Now, provides the ability to create a proof-of-concept version of an application’s interface before it’s built.

Builder.ai says its revenue has more than doubled over the past year, off an undisclosed base, thanks to strong customer demand for its tools. Using the funding round announced today, the startup will hire more employees to support growth initiatives. It also has plans to expand its partner ecosystem.

The company’s product development roadmap, in turn, will place an emphasis on artificial intelligence. In particular, it plans to develop new AI-powered conversational features for its product suite. The enhancements are designed to reduce the amount of time and effort involved in software development initiatives. 

“Builder.ai was founded on the promise that everyone should be empowered to unlock their human potential,” said founder Sachin Dev Duggal. “We are entering an incredible time in history where the very notion of software is changing.”

The investment comes a few weeks after the startup reportedly raised a “significant” investment from Microsoft Corp. as part of a new AI partnership. The partnership will see Build.ai integrate its technology with multiple Microsoft products, including Azure OpenAI Service. 

Image: Builder.ai