After a $126m seed round in 2023, followed by a year shrouded in secrecy, AI startup Poolside came out with a bang yesterday when it announced a $500m Series B led by global investor Bain Capital Ventures.
The company, which is building a GenAI model that can help developers write software code, hasn’t yet publicly released a product — but is now valued at $3bn post-money, a figure confirmed to Sifted by Poolside and first reported by Bloomberg.
At Sifted Summit, vice president of operations Margarida Garcia told Sifted that, after a year of building up the technology, Poolside is now getting ready to bring its model to market — and generate more significant revenue.
The startup is currently testing its technology with a number of users in Europe and the US.
“We’re now ready for the next stage,” she told Sifted.
“We’re not a research lab, we’re going to market, and we have to build a very strong revenue engine.”
What does Poolside do?
Founded by former GitHub CTO Jason Warner and Eiso Kant, a serial entrepreneur who has founded Paris-based software analytics firm Athenian, Poolside is building a foundational GenAI model to help developers write software code.
Its first product takes the form of an assistant for developers, says Garcia, which can answer queries about code writing and also help complete code faster.
It is a similar offering to Github’s coding copilot, which is Poolside’s main competitor for now, according to Garcia.
Users can adapt Poolside’s AI model to their own organisation, to create a custom model based on how their own developers write software and which libraries they use. No data or code leaves the customers’ premises, according to the company, meaning that the technology is particularly suited to highly-regulated industries like defence or finance.
Speaking at a networking event in Paris earlier this week, cofounder Eiso Kant said that Poolside is currently testing the product within large enterprises that employ 5k developers or more, both in Europe and North America; “think some of the largest banks in the world, the defence sector, retail and others,” said Kant at the time.
From tech to market
Building a foundational AI model comes with high computing costs, as reflected by the monster rounds raised by companies in the sector. Paris-based Mistral AI recently closed a €600m Series B, bringing total capital raised to date by the company to more than €1bn.
In a blog post, Poolside said that its latest injection of capital has enabled the company to secure 10k graphic processing units (GPUs) — the type of chips that are used to run GenAI models.
But it’s not just about ramping up the capabilities of the model. Garcia said that Poolside’s priority is now to bring the product to market and to start generating significant revenue.
“We don’t expect the amount of money that’s been thrown at all of us to be here for too long,” she said.
“If we want to be in this race, we really need to build a very strong revenue engine alongside our model.”
While Poolside’s team of 62 employees is still 70% technical roles, said Garcia, the startup has been building up its go-to-market team over the past few months.
In April, GitHub’s former vice president of global sales Paul St John joined the company as chief revenue officer.
A US-European company
Poolside was created in the US but garnered a lot of attention when it opened a subsidiary in Paris last year.
The startup raised its $126m seed round from a number of investors in France including French billionaire Xavier Niel, business angels Rodolphe Saadé and Motier Ventures and investors such as NewWave and Frst. The company also received support from French public bank Bpifrance.
Sources at the time told Sifted that the company was moving its HQ to Paris.
Poolside says that it remains HQ’d in the US but has built a team across both continents, with a strong focus on applied research and engineering talent in Europe.
The startup recruits across the continent, and Garcia said that the team gets together monthly in the French capital.
“We are hiring [in Europe] because we think there is a giant opportunity for talent,” she said.
“We realised that the level of seniority we could actually attract in Europe was much stronger, so [the region] became a strong focus.”
About 80% of Poolside’s team is currently based across Europe, Garcia adds.
But as the company doubles down on its go-to-market strategy, she said she expects the proportion of US-based employees to increase.
“The US will pick up the pace,” she said. “Especially when it comes to post-sales and software architects. They need to be based where the customers are based.”
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/poolside-ai-margarida-garcia-interview/
