AI Startup Poolside Reaches $3 Billion Valuation, Challenging GitHub in Software Development

French startup Poolside nears $3B valuation for AI that can write code

Poolside is developing a ChatGPT-like large language model (LLM) that writes software code -- but the business plan remains hush-hush. The company has yet to launch its first product. However, on its website Poolside states that it is currently training its LLM by "allowing it to improve by completing millions of tasks in tens of thousands of real world software projects." The startup is currently focused on winning over developers and has shown a demo code-generation product to investors, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. Bain Capital Ventures, an existing investor in Poolside, is in talks to lead the latest investment round. Poolside was founded in April 2023 by Jason Warner and Eiso Kant. Warner was previously CTO at Microsoft-owned GitHub, which launched the AI-powered programming tool Copilot back in 2021. Kant previously founded source{d}, which in 2016 became one of the world's first companies dedicated to applying AI to code. In August 2023, Poolside raised a massive $126mn seed round, after which it moved its HQ from the US to Paris. That move came just a few months after French president Emmanuel Macron announced a €500mn plan to encourage the development of new AI "champions." France, and Paris in particular, has become a European hotbed for artificial intelligence. In June, OpenAI rival Mistral raised €600mn at a €5.8bn valuation. In May, startup Holistic (now known simply as H) secured $200mn in a round that values the company at $370mn. Both startups are based in the City of Light. Poolside draws a number of parallels with Mistral in particular, which is also building LLMs that write code. However, Mistral is primarily targeting corporate customers, not developers.

AI startup Poolside nears $3 billion valuation

The company is set to raise nearly $500 million in new financing, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. Bain Capital Ventures, an existing investor in Poolside, is in talks to lead the investment round. The startup didn't respond to requests for comment. Bain declined to comment. The large investment in the nascent company shows the continued investor appetite for AI startups, even as the public markets have cooled on the technology's immediate commercial payoffs. Paris-based Poolside was formed in early 2023 by Jason Warner, the former chief technology officer of coding repository GitHub, and Eiso Kant, a software entrepreneur. The startup relocated to France last year following a $126 million seed financing round, according to reports. Two other Parisian startups, Mistral AI and H, have raised massive amounts of venture capital to create generative AI models. Warner and Kant have said little about their product or business. The company's website lays out a plan to build the "most capable AI" for software coding, followed by a vision to expand those capabilities into "other fields." The startup is currently focused on winning over developers and has shown a demo code-generation product to investors, a person familiar with the matter said. Poolside's approach differs from that of Mistral, which offers a code-generation model but is primarily targeting corporate customers, the person said. The market for tools that aid and automate computer coding is crowded. Microsoft Corp. has released its Copilot coding assistant developed by GitHub, which Microsoft acquired in 2018. Several other venture-backed startups, including Cognition AI and Mistral, are also developing similar features. Poolside has signed multiple deals for access to powerful Nvidia Corp. GPUs with Iris Energy Ltd., an Australian data center company that provides computing resources for Bitcoin mining and AI.

AI Startup Poolside Nears $3 Billion Valuation to Rival Microsoft's GitHub

Poolside, a startup creating artificial intelligence to write software, is in talks to raise a new round of funding that would give it a $3 billion valuation even before releasing an initial product, according to people familiar with the deal. The company is set to raise nearly $500 million in new financing, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. Bain Capital Ventures, an existing investor in Poolside, is in talks to lead the investment round.