Codegen raises new money to automate software program engineering duties
Jay Hack, an AI researcher with a background in pure language processing and laptop imaginative and prescient, got here to the conclusion a number of years in the past that giant language fashions (LLMs) — assume OpenAI’s GPT-4 or ChatGPT — have the potential to make builders extra productive by translating pure language requests into code.
After working at Palantir as a machine studying engineer and constructing and promoting Mira, an AI-powered purchasing startup for cosmetics, Hack started experimenting with LLMs to execute pull requests — the method of merging new code adjustments with foremost undertaking repositories. With the assistance of a small crew, Hack slowly expanded these experiments right into a platform, Codegen, that makes an attempt to automate as many mundane, repetitive software program engineering duties as potential leveraging LLMs.
“Codegen automates the menial labor out of software program engineering by empowering AI brokers to ship code,” Hack advised TechCrunch in an e mail interview. “The platform allows firms to maneuver considerably faster and eliminates prices from tech debt and upkeep, permitting firms to give attention to product innovation.”
So, one may surprise, what units Codegen aside from code-generating AI like GitHub Copilot, Amazon CodeWhisperer and the Salesforce mannequin with which Codegen shares a reputation? For one, the challenges that Codegen’s tackling, Hack says. Whereas Copilot, CodeWhisperer and others give attention to code autocompletion, Codegen sees to “codebase-wide” points like massive migrations and refactoring (i.e. restructuring an app’s code with out altering its performance).
“Codegen leverages a multi-agent system for advanced code technology,” Hack defined. “This entails orchestrating a swarm of brokers that collaboratively decompose and clear up massive duties. Many LLMs successfully deliberate and construct upon one another’s work, [which] yields considerably higher outputs.”
Picture Credit: Codegen
Codegen’s core product is a cloud and on-premises instrument that connects to codebases and undertaking administration boards, resembling Jira and Linear, and robotically generates pull requests to deal with assist tickets. The platform may even arrange a few of the crucial code infrastructure and logging, Hack says — though it wasn’t clear to this reporter what Hack meant by “infrastructure.”
“In distinction to different options, Codegen supplies a better stage of automation in executing complete duties on behalf of builders,” Hack mentioned. “We scrape an organization’s backlog, discover the solvable tickets, then spin up a military of brokers to search out the related code and produce a pull request.”
Now, Codegen’s promising lots contemplating even one of the best AI fashions in the present day make main errors. For instance, it’s well-established that generative coding instruments can introduce insecure code, with one Stanford examine suggesting that software program engineers who use code-generating AI usually tend to trigger safety vulnerabilities within the apps they develop.
Hack says that Codegen, for its half, is making an attempt to strike “the fitting steadiness” of human oversight and greatest practices surrounding monitoring LLM-generated code.
“That is vital work, and the complete growth ecosystem would profit from a greater understanding of the best way to consider and confirm LLM output,” Hack mentioned. “Important advances might want to happen for there to be widespread developer belief in generalized, automated code technology methods.”
Traders appear to assume that Codegen’s going locations, for what it’s price.
The corporate this week introduced that it closed a $16 million seed spherical led by Thrive Capital with participation from angel buyers together with Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo and Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger. The tranche brings Codegen’s whole raised to $16.2 million and values the startup at $60 million post-money, Hack claims.
Thrive’s Philip Clark had this to say by way of e mail: “In 2023, most builders nonetheless spend an unreasonable share of their time writing code to cope with low-level duties like migrations, refactors, integrations and bug fixes. Corporations like Codegen are leveraging LLMs to construct AI brokers that free engineers from this drudgery. Builders will quickly have the ability to hand off jobs to brokers in order that they’ll cease worrying about software program toil and keep centered on creating new merchandise.”
San Francisco-based Codegen doesn’t have paying prospects but — it’s at present incubating the platform with two “large-scale” enterprise companions. However Hack’s anticipating development into the subsequent yr.
“We’re elevating important capital as the chance to make such a considerable and impressive product has solely not too long ago emerged, and we wish to dash full drive in direction of the market,” he mentioned, including that Codegen plans to develop its workforce from six workers to 10 by the top of the yr. “The funds will likely be used to scale our workforce and assist our infrastructure.”