As the tech industry continues to evolve at a rapid pace, developers are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence (AI) tools to boost their productivity and learning capabilities. A recent survey found that 77% of developers feel favorably about using AI in their workflows, with 70% claiming to be using or planning to use AI coding tools this year.
Investors See Potential in Generative Coding Tools
The enthusiasm for AI-powered coding tools is also reflected in the funding landscape. Investors are pouring money into startups like Tabnine, which recently announced a $25 million Series B funding round led by Telstra Ventures, with participation from Atlassian Ventures, Elaia, Headline, Hetz Ventures, Khosla Ventures, and TPY Capital.
Tabnine’s AI-Infused Platform
Founded in 2012 by Dror Weiss and Eran Yahav, Tabnine aims to revolutionize the software development lifecycle with its generative AI-powered platform. Yahav is a professor at Technion (the Israel Institute of Technology), while Weiss is a Technion computer science graduate.
Among other coding tools powered by first- and third-party generative AI models, Tabnine offers Tabnine Chat, an AI ‘code assistant’ that writes code and answers questions about organizations’ codebases. This feature is reminiscent of the popular AI chatbot, ChatGPT, but with a focus on code generation.
Competitors and Market Differentiation
Tabnine has competitors in GitHub Copilot and Amazon CodeWhisperer, but Weiss asserts that the company affords more control and personalization than rival systems. For example, Tabnine allows customers to deploy its tools either on-premises or via a virtual private cloud.
Weiss also highlights that Tabnine’s flexible architecture enables easy switching between code-generating AI models, future-proofing the platform as new models become available from other vendors. This approach is seen as a key differentiator in the market.
Reduced Legal Risks
Tabnine claims to be less legally risky than its competition, particularly when it comes to intellectual property (IP) law. Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI are currently being sued in a class-action lawsuit that accuses them of violating IP law by allowing Copilot to regurgitate sections of copyrighted code without providing credit.
While liability is a concern for companies using AI-powered coding tools, Weiss notes that Tabnine strictly uses AI models trained on code with permissive licenses or works with customers to train models on their in-house codebases. This approach provides better control and security for users.
User Base and Growth
Tabnine’s approach seems to be working, with over a million users and 10,000 customers, although this is short of Copilot’s roughly one million paying users and 37,000 corporate customers. Weiss says that the company expects to end the year with 150 employees, up from around 60 today.
Future Plans
The proceeds from the Series B funding round will be used to expand Tabnine’s generative coding capabilities and build out its sales and global support teams. This investment is expected to further solidify the company’s position in the market and drive growth.
AI-Powered Coding Tools: The Future of Development?
As developers increasingly turn to AI tools to boost their productivity and learning capabilities, it’s clear that this trend will continue to shape the industry. With companies like Tabnine leading the charge, the future of development looks bright – and powered by AI.
