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AI is supercharging coding — and developer are embracing it .
In a late StackOverflow poll , 44 % of software railroad engineer said that theyuse AI tools as part of their development processesnow and 26 % plan to shortly . Gartnerestimatesthat over half of administration are currently pilot or have already deploy AI - driven coding assistants , and that 75 % of developer will use coding assistants in some shape by 2028 .
Ex - Microsoft software package developer Igor Ostrovskybelieves that soon , there wo n’t be a developer whodoesn’tuse AI in their workflows . “Software engineering remains a difficult and all - too - often dull and frustrating job , particularly at graduated table , ” he told TechCrunch . “ AI can improve software quality , squad productiveness and help restore the joy of programing . ”
So Ostrovskydecided to build up the AI - power slang platform that he himself would want to use .
That program isAugment , and on Wednesday itemergedfrom stealth with $ 252 million in support at a near - unicorn ( $ 977 million ) post - money valuation . With investments from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and VCs include Index Ventures , Sutter Hill Ventures , Lightspeed Venture Partners , Innovation Endeavors and Meritech Capital , Augment aims to stimulate up the still - nascent market for generative AI coding technologies .
“ Most companies are disgruntled with the programs they produce and down ; software program is too often frail , complex and expensive to keep with development teams bogged down with foresightful backlogs for characteristic asking , bug fix , protection patches , integrating requests , migration and upgrades , ” Ostrovsky said . “ Augment has both the best team and recipe for gift programmers and their organizations to save high-pitched - tone software quicker . ”
Ostrovsky spend most seven year at Microsoft before joining stark Storage , a startup developing newsflash data storage ironware and software product , as a founding applied scientist . While at Microsoft , Ostrovsky exercise on element of Midori , a next - generation operating system the company never released but whose concepts have made their way into other Microsoft projection over the last decade .
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In 2022 , Ostrovsky and Guy Gur - Ari , previously an AI research scientist at Google , teamed up to create Augment ’s MVP . To satiate out the startup ’s executive ranks , Ostrovsky and Gur - Ari bestow on Scott Dietzen , X - chief executive officer of Pure Storage , and Dion Almaer , formerly a Google engineering managing director and a VP of engineering at Shopify .
Augment stay a funnily hush - hush mathematical process .
In our conversation , Ostrovsky was n’t willing to say much about the user experience or even the reproductive AI models driving Augment ’s features ( whatever they may be ) — salvage that Augment is using OK - tune up “ industry - leading ” open good example of some sort .
He did say how Augment plans to make money : received software - as - a - service subscriptions . Pricing and other detail will be revealed later this class , Ostrovsky added , closer to Augment ’s design GA release .
“ Our backing render many years of runway to continue to build what we think to be the best team in enterprisingness AI , ” he order . “ We ’re accelerate intersection developing and building out Augment ’s product , engineering and go - to - marketplace single-valued function as the caller pitch up for rapid maturation . ”
Rapid growth is perhaps the upright injection Augment has at making undulation in an more and more cutthroat industry .
much every technical school hulk offers its own adaptation of an AI coding assistant . Microsoft has GitHub Copilot , which is by far the firmest entrenched with over 1.3 million paying individual and 50,000 enterprise customers as of February . Amazon has AWS ’ CodeWhisperer . And Google has Gemini Code Assist , late rebranded from Duet AI for Developers .
Elsewhere , there ’s a torrent of coding assistant startups : Magic , Tabnine , Codegen , Refact , TabbyML , Sweep , LaredoandCognition ( whichreportedlyjust raised $ 175 million),to name a few . HarnessandJetBrains , which developed the Kotlin programming linguistic process , recentlyreleasedtheirown . So didSentry(albeit with more of a cybersecurity hang ) .
Can they all — plus Augment now — do business harmoniously together ? It seems unlikely . Eye - watering compute costs alone make the AI coding assistant business a ambitious one to maintain . overproduction relate to preparation and function models force generative AI coding startupKiteto shut down in December 2022.Even Copilot loses money , to the tune of around $ 20 to $ 80 a month per exploiter , according to The Wall Street Journal .
Ostrovsky incriminate that there ’s impulse behind Augment already ; he claims that “ century ” of software developers across “ 12 ” of companies , admit payment startupKeeta(which is also Eric Schmidt - endorse ) , are using Augment in early admission . But will the uptake sustain ? That ’s the million - buck question , indeed .
I also inquire if Augment has made any steps toward solving the proficient black eye plaguing computer code - bring forth AI , in particular around vulnerability .
An analysis by GitClear , the developer of the code analytics tool of the same name , foundthat coding help are resulting in more false codification being agitate to codebases , creating worry for software program maintainers . Security researchers have warned that procreative twit tools canamplifyexisting bugs and exploits in projects . And Stanford researchers havefoundthat developers who accept code recommendations from AI assistant tend to bring about less good computer code .
Then there ’s copyright to worry about .
Augment ’s models were undoubtedly take aim on in public available data , like all reproductive AI models — some of which may’ve been copyrighted or under a restrictive license . Some marketer have argued thatfair usance doctrineshields them from copyright claims while at the same time rolling out tools to extenuate potential infringement . But that has n’t stopped software engineer fromfilingclass activity lawsuits over what they allege are open licensing and IP infringement .
To all this , Ostrovsky says : “ Current AI coding assistants do n’t adequately sympathise the programmer ’s intention , ameliorate software timbre nor facilitate team productiveness , and they do n’t properly protect rational attribute . Augment ’s engineering squad boasts deep AI and systems expertise . We ’re poised to fetch AI cypher aid innovations to developer and software teams . ”
Augment , which is based in Palo Alto , has around 50 employees ; Ostrovsky expects that figure to double by the end of the twelvemonth .
