AI Start-Up Poolside Secures $500M Funding from eBay, Nvidia, and Major Investors

Poolside Secures $500 Million in Series B Funding for AI Software Development Platform

Poolside, the innovative AI-driven software development platform, has successfully raised $500 million in new funding. This impressive financial round, led by Bain Capital Ventures, included participation from notable tech giants such as eBay (through eBay Ventures) and Nvidia. With this investment, Poolside has now raised a total of $626 million, and its valuation has soared to $3 billion, according to Bloomberg.

In June, Poolside was actively seeking over $400 million in funding, with Bain Capital in negotiations to co-lead this significant round.

Founded just last year by software engineers Jason Warner and Eiso Kant, Poolside operates out of both the U.S. and Europe. Warner, a former CTO of GitHub, has also led engineering teams at Canonical and Heroku. Kant has an extensive background as a co-founder of several developer-focused startups, including Athenian, which specializes in engineering analytics.

Warner and Kant first connected in 2017, and over the following six years, they envisioned an AI-powered tool suite designed to assist developers, leading to the inception of Poolside.

The company creates unique AI models that aid developers by autocompleting code and suggesting relevant code snippets tailored to specific contexts or codebases—similar to other AI-assisted coding tools. Poolside's primary clients include Global 2000 companies and various public-sector agencies, although only a few have been made public.

The recent Series B funding will empower Poolside to activate 10,000 Nvidia GPUs for training its future AI models, according to Warner. This capital will also enhance the company's go-to-market strategies and research and development efforts.

Despite existing concerns surrounding security, copyright, and reliability of AI-powered coding tools, developer adoption continues to rise. A recent GitHub poll revealed that a significant majority of developers have embraced AI tools in some capacity. As of April, GitHub reported that Copilot boasted over 1.8 million paying users and more than 50,000 business clients.

In response to this growing trend, venture capitalists are heavily investing in AI coding startups. Notably, generative AI coding company Magic raised $320 million in August, coinciding with Codeium's closure of a $150 million fundraising round as a competitor to GitHub Copilot. Earlier in the month, Cognition, recognized for its viral coding assistant Devin, secured $175 million, achieving a $2 billion valuation.

Polaris Market Research anticipates that the market for AI coding tools could reach a staggering $27 billion by 2032, a projection that appears increasingly realistic given current investment trends.

The Series B funding round also saw contributions from 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.