All kinds of programming Copilot have been completely rolled up, not only foreign Microsoft, Google, Meta, but also domestic AI giants such as Baidu, Alibaba, and SenseTime have been eyeing the fat of programming, and many startups have also resolutely chosen this track.
Recently, Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google and the CTO who once brought Java to Sun's peak, has also ventured back into the programming space and invested in a new programming application, interestingly, with a Microsoft background.
这个平台就是Augment，周三它以 2.52 亿美元的资金悄然出现，投后，该平台的估值已接近独角兽（9.77 亿美元）。 凭借前谷歌CEO Eric Schmidt 以及 Index Ventures、Sutter Hill Ventures、Lightspeed Venture Partners、Innovation Endeavors 和 Meritech Capital 等风险投资公司的投资，Augment 旨在撼动仍处于萌芽阶段的生成式 AI 编码技术市场。
Schmidt has a very unique vision and has a high level of praise for this new product, Augment - "AI is ready to change coding, and after investigating the situation, we are convinced that Augment has the best team and recipe to make programmers and their organizations more and better software." ”
Former Microsoft developer entry programming Copilot
The use of AI in development processes is nothing new. We wonder who is this person who is praised by Schmidt?
That man was gor Ostrovsky, a former Microsoft software developer.
"Soon, there won't be a developer who doesn't use AI in their workflows. Ostrovsky's judgment is supported by a lot of data, such as in a recent StackOverflow poll, where 44% of software engineers said they now use AI tools as part of their development process, and 26% plan to do so soon.
"Software engineering is still a difficult and often tedious and frustrating endeavor, especially on a larger scale...... And AI can improve software quality, team productivity, and help restore the joy of programming. ”
As a result, Ostrovsky decided to build his own AI-coding platform that he wanted to use.
"Most companies are dissatisfied with the programs they make and use; software is often fragile, complex, and expensive to maintain, and development teams are stuck with a long-standing backlog of feature requests, bug fixes, security patches, integration requests, migrations, and upgrades. Ostrovsky said. "Augment has the best team and recipes to help programmers and their organizations deliver high-quality software faster. ”
Ostrovsky spent nearly seven years at Microsoft before joining Pure Storage, a startup developing hardware and software products for flash data storage, as a founding engineer. During his time at Microsoft, Ostrovsky worked on the development of Midori components, and the company never released the next-generation operating system, Midori, but the concept has been incorporated into other Microsoft projects over the past decade.
2022 年,Ostrovsky 和前 Google 人工智能研究科学家 Guy Gur-Ari 联手创建了 Augment 的 MVP。 为了充实这家初创公司的高管队伍,Ostrovsky 和 Gur-ari 聘请了 Pure Storage 前首席执行官 Scott Dietzen 和前 Google 工程总监兼 Shopify 工程副总裁 Dion Almaer。
神秘而奇怪的Increase
Augment is still a strange covert operation. "Enhancing, not replacing, programmers" is a loud slogan for the platform.
During our conversation, Ostrovsky was reluctant to talk too much about the user experience or even the AI model behind Augment, he just said that Augment was using some sort of fine-tuned "industry-leading" open model.
How does Augment make money?
Ostrovsky added that pricing and other details will be announced later this year, with a GA version coming out.
"Our funding provides a multi-year runway to continue building what we believe is the best team in the field of enterprise AI," he said. "As the company prepares for rapid growth, we are accelerating product development and building Augment's product, engineering, and go-to-market capabilities. ”
Rapid growth is perhaps the best opportunity for Augment to make waves in an increasingly competitive industry.
Rolled-up AI coding assistant:
Losing money, loopholes, copyrights
In fact, each tech giant offers its own version of an AI-coded assistant. Microsoft owns GitHub Copilot, which is by far the most solid, with more than 1.3 million paying individual customers and 50,000 enterprise customers as of February. Amazon owns CodeWhisperer from AWS. Google also launched Gemini Code Assist, recently rebranded as Duet AI for Developers.
Elsewhere, there are also a plethora of coding assistant startups: Magic, Tabnine, Codegen, Refact, TabbyML, Sweep, Laredo, and Cognition (which reportedly just raised $175 million) to name a few. Harness and JetBrains, who developed the Kotlin programming language, recently released their own . The same goes for Sentry (albeit with a greater inclination towards cybersecurity).
Can all of the above – plus now Augment – do business together harmoniously? It seems unlikely.
The dizzying cost of computing alone makes the AI coding assistant business a difficult business to maintain. Overruns related to training and service models forced generative AI coding startup Kite to shut down in December 2022. According to the Wall Street Journal, even Copilot is losing money, losing about $20 to $80 per user per month.
Ostrovsky hinted that there was already momentum behind "Augment," claiming that "hundreds" of software developers at "dozens" of companies, including payments startup Keeta (also backed by Eric Schmidt), were using Augment in early access. But is that absorption going to last? It's really a million-dollar question.
Of course, many people must be concerned about such a question:
Has Augment taken any steps to address the technical hurdles plaguing code-generating AI, particularly around vulnerabilities.
An analysis by GitClear, the developer of the code analysis tool of the same name, found that the coding assistant caused more error code to be pushed to the codebase, which caused problems for software maintainers. Security researchers warn that generative coding tools could amplify existing bugs and vulnerabilities in the project. Researchers at Stanford University found that developers who accept code recommended by AI assistants tend to generate less secure code.
Then there's the copyright issue to worry about.
There is no doubt that Augment's models are trained on publicly available data, and like all generative AI models, some of which may have been copyrighted or subject to a restricted license. Some vendors believe that the fair use doctrine protects them from copyright claims while introducing tools to mitigate potential infringement. But that hasn't stopped programmers from filing class action lawsuits over what they call open licensing and intellectual property infringement.
In response, Ostrovsky said: "Current AI coding assistants don't fully understand programmers' intentions, don't improve software quality, don't improve team productivity, and don't properly protect intellectual property." Augment's engineering team has deep AI and systems expertise. We are ready to bring AI coding-assisted innovation to developers and software teams. ”
Finally, Augment is headquartered in Palo Alto, USA, and employs about 50 people, a number that Ostrovsky expects to double by the end of the year.