LangChain
Unicorn Β· $1.3BSan Francisco, US Β· 60 employees Β· 18 known investors
LangChain provides an agent engineering platform and open source frameworks for developers to build, test, and deploy AI agents that can use data and take actions. The platform includes LangSmith for observability and evaluation, and serves enterprise customers including 35% of the Fortune 500.
Also known as langchain-ai Β· LangChain, Inc.
Founders & leadership
Investors Β· 18
Also in the syndicate Β· 3
Funding
SEC filings, press & company announcements- Undisclosed amountSeries BOct 2025 Β· 2 sources
IVP (lead), Amplify, Benchmark, CapitalG, Cisco Investments, Databricks Ventures, Datadog Ventures, Frontline Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, Sequoia, ServiceNow Ventures, Workday Ventures
Source β - Undisclosed amountSeed RoundApr 2023Source β
Source: company announcements and press reports β follow each round's link for the claim.
Valuation Β· disclosed
Disclosed eventsSource: SEC prospectus filings, and round valuations the company or its investors disclosed β follow each entry's link for the claim.
Company profile
researched Aug 2026LangChain develops open source frameworks and a commercial platform for what it calls "agent engineering" β the process of building, testing, deploying, monitoring and iterating on LLM-powered agents. Its open source side includes the langchain framework (a Python/JS library with pre-built agent architectures, a create_agent ReAct pattern, and integrations for models, tools, vector stores and databases), langgraph (a low-level orchestration framework with a durable runtime providing persistence, checkpointing, rewind and human-in-the-loop support), and deepagents, a higher-level agent harness for autonomous, long-horizon work with planning, subagents and file-system usage. The langchain repository is MIT-licensed [2][4].
The commercial product is LangSmith, described by the company as an agent engineering platform spanning observability (step-by-step tracing, dashboards, online evals, cost/latency/error tracking, an Insights Agent that categorizes agent behavior patterns), evaluation (turning traces into datasets and expert review into standardized evals, queried through SmithDB), deployment (formerly LangGraph Platform; 30+ Agent Server endpoints, isolated sandboxes for agent-generated code, infrastructure for long-running stateful tasks), governance (an LLM Gateway for routing and controlling model calls, spend limits, sensitive-data detection and human approval steps), and no-code agent building via Fleet/Agent Builder. LangSmith can be deployed as SaaS, BYOC or self-hosted, and the company's Trust Center cites HIPAA, SOC 2 Type 2 and GDPR compliance. LangSmith Engine is positioned as an agent that automatically detects production issues and feeds fixes back into the evaluation loop [0][3][6].
The company states that LangSmith is usable independently of its open source frameworks, and emphasizes model and vendor neutrality with 1,000+ integrations. It also runs LangChain Academy (free courses), a community forum, and an event series called Interrupt [0][3][4][5]."/*, */
Founding story
Harrison Chase started LangChain in late 2022 as a personal side project consisting of one Python package published from his personal GitHub account, with no broader plan; interest accelerated after ChatGPT launched. He partnered with co-founder Ankush Gola to incorporate the company in early 2023 [5][7].
Business model
Open source frameworks (langchain, langgraph, deepagents; MIT-licensed and free to use) serve as the distribution layer, while revenue comes from LangSmith, the commercial agent engineering platform sold to development teams and enterprises, offered as SaaS, bring-your-own-cloud or self-hosted deployments with a free sign-up tier and sales-led "get a demo" motion [0][2][3][4][6].
Paid subscriptions/usage of the LangSmith commercial platform (observability, evaluation, deployment, governance) across cloud, BYOC and self-hosted deployment options; the open source frameworks are free [0][3][4][6].
Traction
Company-reported figures include 350M+ monthly open source downloads and more than 1 billion cumulative open source downloads, 7,000+ active LangSmith customers, over 1 billion LangSmith events ingested per day, 12x year-over-year growth in monthly LangSmith trace volume, and use by 35% of the Fortune 500 including 5 of the Fortune 10. The GitHub repository shows about 145,000 stars and 24,100 forks (TechCrunch cited 118,000 stars in October 2025). Combined langchain and langgraph monthly downloads were reported at 90M as of October 2025 [0][2][5][6][7].
Latest developments
On October 20, 2025 LangChain announced a $125M round at a $1.25B valuation led by IVP, together with 1.0 releases of the LangChain and LangGraph frameworks (revamped langchain package with pre-built architectures and a commitment to no breaking changes before 2.0), the Insights Agent in LangSmith Observability, and a private-preview no-code Agent Builder. Company blog posts dated May 2026 reference an Interrupt conference recap and the introduction of LangChain Labs. The current site also describes LangSmith Engine, SmithDB, Fleet no-code agents, an LLM Gateway, sandboxes and a Context Hub, plus the deepagents framework and a dcode CLI [0][3][6][7].
βΈFull profile β market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history, risks & controversies
Market position
Positioned as an open, model-neutral agent engineering platform. The company reports working with 35% of the Fortune 500, that 5 of the Fortune 10 are LangSmith customers, and that it is the largest builder community in AI; TechCrunch describes it as an early darling of the AI era that reached unicorn status. Named customers/users include Replit, Clay, Harvey, Rippling, Cloudflare, Workday, Cisco, Klarna, Podium, C.H. Robinson, Monday Service and ServiceNow [0][5][6][7].
Emphasizes openness and neutrality: MIT-licensed frameworks, the ability to swap models, tools and databases without rewriting applications, and LangSmith usable regardless of whether an agent is built on LangChain frameworks. Offers a layered abstraction range from high-level templates (deepagents, create_agent) to low-level orchestration (langgraph), plus deployment flexibility across SaaS, BYOC and self-hosted environments [0][2][4][6].
Technology
A framework and platform stack: the langchain library provides a standard interface across models, embeddings, vector stores and tools with 1,000+ integrations and middleware hooks for human-in-the-loop approval, context compression and sensitive-data removal; langgraph supplies a durable runtime with persistence, checkpointing, rewind and low-level orchestration; deepagents adds planning, subagents and file-system capabilities. LangSmith adds tracing, a SmithDB trace query layer advertised at sub-second queries on complex traces, dataset and evaluation tooling, 30+ Agent Server endpoints, isolated sandboxes for executing agent-generated code, dashboards and online evals, an LLM Gateway for cross-provider routing and control, and Engine for automated issue detection [0][2][3][4][6].
Go-to-market
Developer-led adoption through free, MIT-licensed open source frameworks and documentation, converting into paid LangSmith usage; supported by self-serve free sign-up, enterprise demos, published customer case studies (Klarna, Monday Service, Podium, C.H. Robinson, ServiceNow), free LangChain Academy courses, a community forum, and the Interrupt conference (London and NYC editions announced) [0][3][4][5].
Software developers and AI engineering teams, ranging from AI-native startups to large enterprises; named users span fintech, HR, logistics, security and enterprise software (Replit, Clay, Harvey, Rippling, Cloudflare, Workday, Cisco, Klarna, C.H. Robinson, ServiceNow, Podium) [0][6].
Geography
Headquartered in San Francisco with offices in New York, Boston and Amsterdam [5].
History
LangChain began in late 2022 as a side project by Harrison Chase β a single Python package pushed from a personal GitHub account β and gained traction after the launch of ChatGPT. Chase teamed up with co-founder Ankush Gola to found the company in early 2023. Chase raised a $10M seed round from Benchmark in April 2023, followed roughly a week later by a $25M Series A led by Sequoia at a reported $200M valuation. The company subsequently launched LangGraph for control over complex agent systems, then LangSmith as an independent commercial observability platform, later expanding it with evaluation, deployment and a no-code agent builder, and most recently released the Deep Agents harness for autonomous long-horizon tasks. On October 20, 2025 it announced a $125M raise at a $1.25B valuation alongside 1.0 releases of LangChain and LangGraph [5][6][7].
Risks & controversies
Sources note the company operates in a hyper-competitive, rapidly evolving space, and that frontier model providers have added more infrastructure of their own, which prompted LangChain to reposition from a framework toward an agent platform. No controversies are described in the provided sources [6][7].
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources β announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed β not independently audited.
Competitors Β· 6
by search overlap
Companies competing with LangChain for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.
Timeline Β· 9
launches, deals, and filingsA company announcement post by Harrison Chase dated May 14, 2026 introduces LangChain Labs; a companion post summarizes everything shipped at the Interrupt conference.
IVP led a $125M round at a $1.25B valuation, joined by new investors CapitalG and Sapphire Ventures and existing investors Sequoia, Benchmark and Amplify, plus ServiceNow Ventures, Workday Ventures, Cisco Investments, Datadog Ventures, Databricks Ventures and Frontline.
$125M source β
LangSmith Observability gained an Insights Agent that automatically categorizes agent behavior patterns; a no-code text-to-agent Agent Builder was released in private preview.
Major 1.0 releases of the langchain and langgraph open source frameworks, with a rewritten langchain package focused on pre-built agent architectures and a commitment to no breaking changes until 2.0.
LangChain released Deep Agents, an agent harness for autonomous, long-horizon tasks, described as its most recent major release in the company's about page.
Harrison Chase launched the startup with a $10 million seed round from Benchmark.
$10M source β
About a week after the seed round, LangChain raised a $25 million Series A led by Sequoia, reportedly at a $200 million valuation.
$25M source β
Harrison Chase teamed up with co-founder Ankush Gola to start LangChain, the company, in early 2023.
Harrison Chase began LangChain in late 2022 as a side project: a single Python package published from a personal GitHub account.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
In the news
Reo.Dev Raises $11.3 Million Series A to Scale AI Signals for Companies Selling to Engineering Teamsprnewswire.com Β· Jul 2026
Daily Indian Funding Roundup & Key News - 16 July 2026: Naturis Bags βΉ100 Cr, Vorflux Raises $15 Mn, Amazon's βΉ60,000 Cr Telangana Betstartuptalky.com Β· Jul 2026βΈResearch sources Β· 8
primary sources listed
- LangChainlangchain.com Β· web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does LangChain do?
- LangChain builds open source agent frameworks and LangSmith, a commercial platform for engineering, testing and deploying AI agents.
- Who founded LangChain?
- LangChain was founded by Harrison Chase, Ankush Gola.
- Who are LangChain's investors?
- LangChain's investors include Abstract Ventures, Amplify Partners, CapitalG, Cisco Investments, Felicis Ventures, Frontline Ventures, IVP (Institutional Venture Partners), Lux Capital and 7 more.
- Where is LangChain headquartered?
- LangChain is headquartered in San Francisco, US.