AI-Coding Startup Poolside Raises Massive $500M Series B

Yet another AI coding startup has raised big.

Poolside closed a $500 million Series B led by Bain Capital Ventures. The new round values the startup at $3 billion, Bloomberg reported.

The round also included investment from several corporate and institutional investors such as Nvidia, DST Global, StepStone Group, Citi Ventures and HSBC Ventures.

The startup builds artificial intelligence software for programmers.

“Only a handful of companies will reach (artificial general intelligence) — and they are being forged at this very moment,” said Poolside CEO Jason Warner in a release. “We believe software development will be the first broad capability where AI will reach and surpass human-level intelligence. Through our team, our applied research, and a powerful revenue engine, poolside will bring AI for software development so that anyone in the world can build.”

The company has raised $626 million since May 2023.

Big deals

Poolside is just one of a handful of big deals recently in the AI coding space.

In August, San Francisco-based Magic, which also develops AI models to write software, raised a $320 million round from new investors including Eric Schmidt and Sequoia. The announcement came nearly two months after Reuters reported the company was in talks with investors to raise a fresh $200 million at a $1.5 billion valuation.

Also in August, AI-powered coding assistant Codeium closed a $150 million Series C round led by General Catalyst that values the Mountain View, California-based startup at $1.25 billion. Codeium’s platform uses generative AI models trained on public code to give developers suggestions for building apps, and can support dozens of programming languages.