AI Startup Poolside Raises $500M from eBay, Nvidia

Poolside, the AI-powered software development platform, has secured half a billion dollars in new capital

A Series B sponsored by Bain Capital Ventures also included participation from a who’s who of Big Tech firms, including eBay (via eBay Ventures) and Nvidia, provided the funding.

Poolside has now raised a total of $626 million. Bloomberg indicates that the startup’s valuation is currently at $3 billion.

In June, TechCrunch disclosed that Poolside was in the process of raising over $400 million in funding, with Bain Capital reportedly in discussions to co-lead the round.

Poolside, a software engineering firm headquartered in the United States and Europe, was established last year by Eiso Kant and CEO Jason Warner.

Warner, who previously served as the Chief Technology Officer of GitHub, has also served as the chief of engineering organizations at Canonical and Heroku. Athenian, an engineering analytics firm, was among the numerous dev-focused businesses that Kant previously co-founded.

Kant encountered Warner in 2017, who spearheaded the development of GitHub’s AI-powered Copilot utility. Poolside was the result of the pair’s six-year plan to develop an AI-driven assistive tool suite for developers.

Poolside creates its own AI models to assist with tasks such as autocompleting code and suggesting code that may be pertinent to a specific context or codebase, similar to competing AI assistive coding tools.

The majority of the company’s clients are public-sector agencies and Global 2000 companies; however, only a small number have been disclosed to the public.

Warner stated that the Series B funding enabled Poolside to deploy 10,000 Nvidia GPUs to train future models and will enhance the company’s R&D and go-to-market initiatives.

Developers have demonstrated enthusiasm for AI-powered assistive coding tools despite the security, copyright, and reliability concerns.

The overwhelming majority of respondents in the most recent GitHub poll reported that they had implemented AI tools in some capacity. In April, GitHub disclosed that Copilot had more than 50,000 business customers and over 1.8 million paying consumers.

Venture capitalists invest substantial amounts of money in AI coding startups, as they are motivated by the adoption trend. In August, Magic, a generative AI coding firm, secured $320 million in funding.

This occurred on the same day that Codeium, a competitor of GitHub Copilot, closed a $150 million fundraising round. In early August, Cognition, which is most renowned for its viral coding assistant Devin, raised $175 million at a $2 billion valuation.

According to Polaris Market Research, the AI coding tools market could be $27 billion by 2032. At this rate, it does not appear to be an unreasonable assumption.

Also investing in Poolside’s Series B were LG Technology Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Citi Ventures, Capital One Ventures, HSBC Ventures, DST Global, StepStone Group, Schroders Capital, Premji Invest, Dorsal Capital, BAM Elevate, Adams Street, and Fin Capital.