Poolside

For decades, software developers have struggled to convert their ideas into dependable, fast code—while dealing with the complexity of a project, the obstacles to debugging, and the limitations of traditional tools. The increasing demand for faster and smarter development tools is pushing the growth of AI-powered coding platforms, especially among small, mor innovative businesses and developers who want to get productive without losing quality.

Led by CEO Jason Warner and CTO Eiso Kant, Poolside is changing the entire software engineering landscape with their proprietary AI models. The mission at the firm is to change the way code is written, tested, and deployed—again, not replace doctors, but offer them an intelligent partner that speeds up the entire coding, testing, and deployment lifecycle. With foundation models like Point and Malibu, the company allows engineers to generate, refactor, and debug code using Reinforcement Learning from Code Execution Feedback—the main difference being that the AI is exploration (trial and error) as human developers do when they become more of a specialist at any particular field.

Developers engage with Poolside through familiar interactions and established workflows. Their platform behaves very much like a collaborative assistant that knows the project context, makes contextual suggestions, and collaborators in multiple contexts. The company provides enterprise-level security and integrations to the cloud with the likes of AWS Bedrock and EC2, perfect for all organizations from traditional startups to mammoth financial institutions. One of the key differentiators with Poolside is its comprehensive toolset, including everything from automated code generation and context-sensitive debugging, and its ability to describe difficult code snippets in plain language, which subsequently eases efforts to onboard new developers faster and boosts productivity for teams. The firm enables real-time collaborative coding for distributed teams and is investing in additional enterprise features, such as compliance-aware coding suggestions that provide options specifically for regulated industries.

Poolside has come a long way since it was founded in July 2023. The company raised $26 million in seed funding and then raised $100 million in an extension round from Bpifrance, Xavier Niel, Rodolphe Saadé, Felicis, and Redpoint Ventures. By October 2024, the firm had completed a $500 million Series B led by Bain Capital Ventures, with participation from eBay Ventures, Nvidia, Citi Ventures, HSBC Ventures, DST Global, StepStone, Schroders Capital, Premji Invest, Dorsal Capital, BAM Elevate, Adams Street, Fin Capital, and others. This brought the company's total funding to about $626 million and its valuation to $3 billion. Poolside had approximately $30 million in 2024, $50 million in 2025, and previous estimates showed it at an approximate annual revenue of $66.4 million. While the company does not publicly disclose precise profit figures, it is obviously scaling quickly and has high revenue-per-employee numbers, therefore it is very likely they are on to profitability.

The pricing method used by the firm offers a subscription and a use-based (not per line of code), which allows prediction and scaling of pricing for enterprise customers to be easier. For example, customers typically pay for access to its proprietary AI models with costs then adjusted for actual usage volume, number of team members who will be using the AI, enterprise features such as compliance-aware coding or on-premise deployment, etc. This pricing flexibility allows Poolside to create opportunities for both startups and large corporations to use its feature-rich AI tools, while allowing the company to establish a diverse set of customers and maintain high revenue per customer. Poolside's pricing structure has contributed in part to its estimated annual revenue of $66.4 million to date. The company has also developed strategic partnerships with highly recognized category leaders, especially AWS, in addition to selling premium contracts to a variety of enterprise customers. 

Poolside has between 200 and 210 employees as far as team growth and expansion is considered, meaning it has a 217% employee growth rate in a year. The firm has a remote-first culture encompassing Europe and North America with in-person meet-ups each month, in addition to twice a year offsite gatherings. The company officially moved its headquarters from the United States to Paris in August 2024, and it still has a presence in San Francisco. In terms of growth - while Poolside has continued to run its business, they have also expanded their community infrastructure, starting with just the Web3 founder ecosystem and have since expanded to support builders across AI, tech and entertainment. The firm manages a private Slack community of over 500 curated AI builders and creators. It has also created a global coworking network of which Poolside Lisbon and Porto, offer deep-work environments for its members.

Although there are more AI coding platforms like GitHub Copilot, Magic AI, Windsurf/ Codeium, Cursor, Cognition AI and Mistral AI trending, Poolside's developer-centric, customizable models and enterprise grade security set it apart, not to mention embedding the platform inside the customers' environments. The training model - Reinforcement Learning from Code Execution Feedback, poolside's strong financial backing (investors) and global presence create a competitive advantage to operate in markets where reliability, compliance and scalability matter.

Click here to access Poolside's website.