Tabnine Raises $25M in Series B Funding for AI Coding Assistance

Tabnine, a generative AI coding assistance startup, has secured $25 million in a Series B funding round. The round was led by Telstra Ventures.

A Pioneer in AI Coding Assistance

Founded in 2012, Tabnine revolutionised software development by introducing AI to speed up the process. The startup’s tools are now used by over a million developers around the globe. According to the company, these tools generate more than 1% of the code written worldwide.

Tabnine claims that its technology automates between 30-50% of repetitive coding tasks, saving engineering teams millions of hours. However, the company sees its current capabilities as just the beginning of AI-driven development.

The Future of AI in Software Development

Tabnine believes that AI is set to become a comprehensive platform that will underpin the entire software lifecycle. The company envisions a future where engineers guide advanced AI agents through high-level conversations, rather than merely prompting them.

Tabnine CEO Dror Weis notes, “As software developers, we’re going to interact with AI at an entirely different level in the coming years. Our AI tools will mature and evolve to truly understand not only the ‘how’, but also the ‘what’ and ‘why’.”

Investing in the Future

The newly raised funds will be utilized to turn this vision into reality. However, Weis emphasises the importance of maintaining customer control over AI implementations. This includes allowing users to customize AI behaviors and recommendations to meet their specific needs.

In addition to customization, Tabnine is committed to privacy, and it only trains models on public open-source code. The company currently holds the position as the largest independent vendor focusing on AI for software developers.

The Demand for AI Coding Assistance

There is a significant demand for generative AI-assisted coding. Among the offerings in the market, Tabnine Chat is similar to GitHub Copilot, which is likely the most popular choice. Other options include Hugging Face’s Starcoder, IBM’s watsonx Code Assistant, Meta’s Code Llama, and Amazon’s CodeWhisperer, which later became part of the AWS Bedrock platform for generative AI projects. Google also has a generative AI coding assistant named Codey, which is available on a web-based software coding environment called Project IDX.