Despite the growing competition in the AI coding assistant industry, Ostrovsky claims that hundreds of developers across dozens of companies are already using Augment in early access. However, the platform faces challenges such as high compute costs, potential copyright issues, and technical setbacks related to code vulnerabilities. Ostrovsky remains confident, stating that Augment's engineering team has the expertise to bring innovative AI coding assistance to developers and software teams.
Key takeaways:
- AI-powered coding platform Augment has emerged from stealth with $252 million in funding at a near-unicorn ($977 million) post-money valuation.
- Augment was founded by ex-Microsoft software developer Igor Ostrovsky and AI research scientist Guy Gur-Ari, and aims to improve software quality and team productivity through AI.
- The platform is currently in early access, with hundreds of software developers across dozens of companies, including payment startup Keeta, already using it.
- Despite the growing market for AI coding assistants, challenges remain, including high compute costs, potential for increased code errors, and copyright concerns related to training AI models on publicly available data.