AI is supercharging coding — and builders are embracing it.
In a latest StackOverflow ballot, 44% of software program engineers mentioned that they use AI tools as part of their development processes now and 26% plan to quickly. Gartner estimates that over half of organizations are presently piloting or have already deployed AI-driven coding assistants, and that 75% of builders will use coding assistants in some kind by 2028.
Ex-Microsoft software program developer Igor Ostrovsky believes that quickly, there gained’t be a developer who doesn’t use AI of their workflows. “Software engineering remains a difficult and all-too-often tedious and frustrating job, particularly at scale,” he informed TechCrunch. “AI can improve software quality, team productivity and help restore the joy of programming.”
So Ostrovsky determined to construct the AI-powered coding platform that he himself would wish to use.
That platform is Augment, and on Wednesday it emerged from stealth with $252 million in funding at a near-unicorn ($977 million) post-money valuation. With investments from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and VCs together with Index Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures, Lightspeed Enterprise Companions, Innovation Endeavors and Meritech Capital, Increase goals to shake up the still-nascent marketplace for generative AI coding applied sciences.
“Most companies are dissatisfied with the programs they produce and consume; software is too often fragile, complex and expensive to maintain with development teams bogged down with long backlogs for feature requests, bug fixes, security patches, integration requests, migrations and upgrades,” Ostrovsky mentioned. “Augment has both the best team and recipe for empowering programmers and their organizations to deliver high-quality software quicker.”
Ostrovsky spent almost seven years at Microsoft earlier than becoming a member of Pure Storage, a startup growing flash knowledge storage {hardware} and software program merchandise, as a founding engineer. Whereas at Microsoft, Ostrovsky labored on elements of Midori, a next-generation working system the corporate by no means launched however whose ideas have made their method into different Microsoft tasks over the past decade.
In 2022, Ostrovsky and Man Gur-Ari, beforehand an AI analysis scientist at Google, teamed as much as create Increase’s MVP. To fill out the startup’s govt ranks, Ostrovsky and Gur-Ari introduced on Scott Dietzen, ex-CEO of Pure Storage, and Dion Almaer, previously a Google engineering director and a VP of engineering at Shopify.
Increase stays a unusually hush-hush operation.
In our dialog, Ostrovsky wasn’t prepared to say a lot in regards to the person expertise and even the generative AI fashions driving Increase’s options (no matter they might be) — save that Increase is utilizing fine-tuned “industry-leading” open fashions of some kind.
He did say how Increase plans to become profitable: normal software-as-a-service subscriptions. Pricing and different particulars might be revealed later this yr, Ostrovsky added, nearer to Increase’s deliberate GA launch.
“Our funding provides many years of runway to continue to build what we believe to be the best team in enterprise AI,” he mentioned. “We’re accelerating product development and building out Augment’s product, engineering and go-to-market functions as the company gears up for rapid growth.”
Speedy development is maybe the perfect shot Increase has at making waves in an more and more cutthroat trade.
Virtually each tech large gives its personal model of an AI coding assistant. Microsoft has GitHub Copilot, which is by far the firmest entrenched with over 1.3 million paying particular person and 50,000 enterprise prospects as of February. Amazon has AWS’ CodeWhisperer. And Google has Gemini Code Help, just lately rebranded from Duet AI for Builders.
Elsewhere, there’s a torrent of coding assistant startups: Magic, Tabnine, Codegen, Refact, TabbyML, Sweep, Laredo and Cognition (which reportedly simply raised $175 million), to call a couple of. Harness and JetBrains, which developed the Kotlin programming language, just lately released their own. So did Sentry (albeit with extra of a cybersecurity bent).
Can all of them — plus Increase now — do enterprise harmoniously collectively? It appears unlikely. Eye-watering compute prices alone make the AI coding assistant enterprise a difficult one to take care of. Overruns associated to coaching and serving fashions compelled generative AI coding startup Kite to close down in December 2022. Even Copilot loses money, to the tune of round $20 to $80 a month per person, based on The Wall Avenue Journal.
Ostrovsky implies that there’s momentum behind Increase already; he claims that “hundreds” of software program builders throughout “dozens” of firms, together with cost startup Keeta (which can be Eric Schmidt-backed), are utilizing Increase in early entry. However will the uptake maintain? That’s the million-dollar query, certainly.
I additionally marvel if Increase has made any steps towards fixing the technical setbacks plaguing code-generating AI, notably round vulnerabilities.
An evaluation by GitClear, the developer of the code analytics instrument of the identical title, found that coding assistants are leading to extra mistaken code being pushed to codebases, creating complications for software program maintainers. Safety researchers have warned that generative coding instruments can amplify current bugs and exploits in tasks. And Stanford researchers have found that builders who settle for code suggestions from AI assistants have a tendency to supply much less safe code.
Then there’s copyright to fret about.
Increase’s fashions had been undoubtedly skilled on publicly out there knowledge, like all generative AI fashions — a few of which can’ve been copyrighted or below a restrictive license. Some distributors have argued that fair use doctrine shields them from copyright claims whereas on the similar time rolling out instruments to mitigate potential infringement. However that hasn’t stopped coders from filing class motion lawsuits over what they allege are open licensing and IP violations.
To all this, Ostrovsky says: “Current AI coding assistants don’t adequately understand the programmer’s intent, improve software quality nor facilitate team productivity, and they don’t properly protect intellectual property. Augment’s engineering team boasts deep AI and systems expertise. We’re poised to bring AI coding assistance innovations to developers and software teams.”
Increase, which relies in Palo Alto, has round 50 workers; Ostrovsky expects that quantity to double by the top of the yr.
