Harness ranked No. 24 on Fortune's innovation list

Harness has been ranked No. 24 on Fortune's America's Most Innovative Companies list for 2026, placing it among 300 US companies assessed for innovation.

Fortune compiled the list with research partner Statista using surveys of more than 40,000 employees and 2,500 industry experts, alongside data such as patents and research investment.

The San Francisco software company said the recognition reflects its focus on applying artificial intelligence to the stages of software delivery that come after code is written. While AI tools have changed how software is produced, it argues that much of the work involved in testing, deployment, security and compliance remains manual.

Harness calls that mismatch the "AI Velocity Paradox" - the growing gap between faster code creation and slower software delivery. It says about 60% to 70% of engineering effort still sits in post-coding processes, where delays and operational risk can accumulate.

Its platform is designed to address those tasks through AI agents, automation and organisational data from software delivery workflows. Customers include large enterprises such as Workday, Morningstar, United Airlines, Keller Williams and National Australia Bank.

Fortune's ranking measures three broad areas: product innovation, process innovation and innovation culture. That framework emphasises not only new software and services, but also how businesses organise work and support experimentation internally.

For Harness, the recognition follows a period of expansion in revenue and product development. The company said it surpassed USD $250 million in annual recurring revenue in 2025, with year-on-year growth of more than 50%.

It also announced a USD $240 million Series E funding round led by Goldman Sachs at a valuation of USD $5.5 billion. Those figures suggest investor confidence in the market for software tools that help enterprises manage increasingly complex development pipelines.

Company figures indicate the scale at which customers are using its products. Over the past 12 months, Harness said it orchestrated more than 185 million deployments, optimised 9.1 billion tests and managed USD $2.8 billion in cloud spend.

Over the same period, it launched 18,000 new features and enhancements, along with three new modules and dozens of AI agents. Harness now supports more than 1,000 enterprise customers across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific, and employs more than 1,200 people across 14 offices.

After code

Harness's central argument is that generative AI has solved only part of the software development problem. If code is produced faster but organisations still rely on fragmented release, testing and compliance processes, engineering teams may simply shift the bottleneck rather than remove it.

The issue has grown more prominent as AI coding assistants gain wider adoption in large organisations. Businesses that once focused on developer productivity now face pressure to show that the rest of the delivery process can keep pace without creating security or governance gaps.

Harness has positioned itself around that part of the market rather than code generation itself. It says its software is intended to reduce manual work in delivery pipelines and help engineering teams manage software releases and infrastructure with greater oversight.

"Being named to Fortune's Most Innovative Companies list is a strong validation of the direction we've taken at Harness," said Jyoti Bansal, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Harness. "AI is accelerating how software is created, but it's also exposing how much of the delivery process is still manual, fragmented, and complex. To keep up, organizations need AI not just for writing code, but for managing everything that happens around it. That's where enterprises are struggling today. This recognition reinforces that solving what happens after code isn't just important - it's becoming the defining challenge for modern software development."

Harness has also appeared on other workplace and technology rankings, including Forbes Best Startup Employers, Forbes Cloud 100, Fast Company's Best Workplaces for Innovators and Inc. Magazine Power Partners. Its investors include Menlo Ventures, IVP, Unusual Ventures and Citi Ventures.