TC Sessions: AI is an event like no other that will let you explore the AI industry with a focus on the startup ecosystem. Whether you’re a founder or an investor or you’re simply curious about the wild world of AI, join us on June 5 in Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley to get inspired and equipped for your next big idea.

Secure your spot before March 2 at 11:59 p.m. PT to save at least $300.

Why attend TC Sessions: AI? 

At TC Sessions: AI, you can gain invaluable insights alongside AI leaders, VCs, and enthusiasts. The jam-packed day features breakout sessions with the best minds in AI, hands-on product demos, and panels from AI trailblazers.

Launching an AI product against established competitors

How do you stay relevant against big players in a highly competitive market? Odyssey co-founder and CEO Oliver Cameron’s panel at TechCrunch Sessions: AI will look at ways small companies can compete against their rivals in a fast-paced and rapidly changing space. 

Cameron is looking at the next frontier of artificial intelligence by pioneering “world models.” His startup Odyssey is training an AI model that aims to generate “cinematic, interactive worlds in real time.” Cameron previously was the co-founder and CEO of autonomous vehicle startup Voyage.

TC Sessions: AI will also include insightful conversations from Twelve Labs CEO Jae Lee, CapitalG partner Jill Chase, and Khosla Ventures partner Kanu Gulati. To learn more about who else will join us on the main stage, check out the TC Sessions: AI event page or apply here by March 7 for a chance to be a speaker yourself.

Don’t miss out on these unbeatable prices

TC Sessions: AI is the place to learn and network. Looking to pitch to investors or bounce ideas off others in intimate group discussions? This is the time — and place — to do it.

Ready to learn from the AI experts? Register now to save up to $325 on select tickets. But don’t wait — this special deal ends on March 2 at 11:59 p.m. PT. 

Want more deals and promotions to TechCrunch events like this? Subscribe to our TechCrunch Events newsletter and you’ll be the first to know when they happen.

Make your voice heard at TechCrunch Sessions: AI

Are you an AI expert who can drive powerful discussions with tech innovators and entrepreneurs? We want to hear from you! Apply by March 7 for a chance to share your expertise and shape the future of the AI community.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TechCrunch Sessions: AI? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

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Do you have game-changing insights that could shape the future of AI? Share your vision with 1,200 AI founders, investors, and industry pioneers at TechCrunch Sessions: AI on June 5 in Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley. Take the stage, lead the conversation, and drive the next wave of innovation.

We’re bringing together top AI visionaries from the startup world to host compelling sessions and interactive roundtables — guiding entrepreneurs, founders, and innovators through AI’s rapidly evolving landscape. Join us and help shape the future!

Host a breakout session at TC Sessions: AI 

Seize the opportunity to dive into critical AI topics. Gather a team of up to four speakers (including a moderator) to lead a dynamic 50-minute session, featuring a presentation, panel discussion, and audience Q&A to spark engaging conversations.

Simply click the “Apply to Speak” button and submit your topic on this event page. Whether you’re focused on startups, investments, infrastructure, or emerging AI tools, TC Sessions: AI is the perfect platform to showcase your expertise.

After submission, our audience will vote on your topic, choosing the sessions they’re most excited to experience live at the event.

Speaking perks

Beyond just branding, get the complete TC Sessions: AI experience! As a breakout speaker, you’ll enjoy enhanced visibility and all the perks of an attendee, including access to exclusive main stage AI sessions, breakouts, and premium 1:1 or small-group networking opportunities.

Additionally, TechCrunch will help amplify your brand with:

• Event agenda listings (web and app).
• A mention in a featured TechCrunch.com article.
• Social media promotion.

Shape the future of AI innovation

Inspire, educate, and lead the way! Make a lasting impact on the AI ecosystem and solidify your standing as a respected leader in the field. Time is ticking — don’t miss out! The last day to apply to speak is March 7 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now before the deadline!

The post Last week to apply to speak at TechCrunch Sessions: AI appeared first on Online Technology News.

Longevity is a hot trend in Silicon Valley these days, driven by rising interest — especially among the wealthy — in preventing disease through regular testing.

A new player, Biograph, has just emerged from stealth, and it’s co-founded by one of the biggest names in longevity science: Dr. Peter Attia. Attia is a Canadian-American physician best known as the author of the bestseller “Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity” and for his podcast.

Biograph’s CEO and other co-founder is John Hering, a prominent Silicon Valley figure. A cybersecurity founder who infamously scanned celebrities’ cellphones at the 2005 Academy Awards, Hering has become best known as one Elon Musk’s biggest backers through his role as a partner at Vy Capital. There, Hering has poured billions into Musk’s startups and donated $500,000 to a pro-Trump super PAC before the election, per a WSJ profile.

Biograph calls itself the world’s “most advanced” preventive health and diagnostics clinic. It currently has a location in Silicon Valley with plans to open in New York City this quarter, and eventually expand globally, according to an announcement on its website.

The startup says it will collect over 1,000 data points across 30+ evaluations to paint a holistic picture of someone’s health and optimize their lifespan. It doesn’t come cheap: Its Core membership costs $7,500 per year while the premium Black membership — which it says provides the “deepest insights” — runs $15,000.

Biograph is backed by Vy Capital, Human Capital, Alpha Wave, and WndrCo, along with angel investors including Balaji Srinivasan, the startup told TechCrunch. Biograph declined to specify how much funding it has raised.

In a statement, Hering said he was inspired to co-found Biograph by the cancer diagnosis of his Vy Capital partner and friend Alexander Tamas. Tamas posted on X that a check-up in his late 30s resulted in an early thyroid cancer diagnosis that probably saved his life — and caused him to encourage Hering to get checked, too.

Biograph claims that over 15% of members have reported discovering “urgent or life-alerting health” insights through its services. The company has been quietly operating since 2020, according to the LinkedIn profile of its executive medical director, Michael Doney, a doctor with a background in longevity.

While Biograph’s announcement doesn’t mention AI, the company is currently looking for a founding AI engineer to build an AI-powered assistant, according to its careers page.

Biograph is part of a quiet boom in startups dedicated to living longer, with Andreessen Horowitz-backed Function Health seeking a $2 billion valuation this year and Sam Altman-backed Retro Biosciences in talks to raise a cool $1 billion last month.

The post Startup co-founded by longevity guru Peter Attia emerges from stealth appeared first on Online Technology News.

We’re assembling the best minds from the startup and VC communities to lead exciting sessions, interactive roundtables, and dynamic breakouts. Step up and share your insights to help founders navigate the complexities of scaling their businesses.

Submit to speak at TC All Stage 

This is your chance to dive into essential scaling topics for startups at every stage. Hit the “Apply to Speak” button on this event page and submit your topic. TC All Stage is the perfect platform to share your expertise on scaling successful startups.

Then, choose your preferred format and topic:

Breakout Session: Gather a team of up to four presenters (with a moderator) to lead a 35-minute session. A mix of presentations, panel discussions, and audience Q&A will fuel impactful conversations.

Roundtable Session: Host two 30-minute encore sessions with up to two speakers. These informal sessions encourage interactive deep dives into your topic, with no videos or slides to limit the conversation.

Perks of speaking

It’s more than just exposure — this is your all-access pass to the TC All Stage experience! While raising your brand’s visibility, you’ll get exclusive access to founder and VC talks in breakouts and roundtables, and you’ll get to network with top industry leaders. 

Plus, TechCrunch will give your brand a major boost with:

• Event agenda listings (web and app).
• A mention in a shared TechCrunch.com article.
• Social media promotion.

Leave your mark on the startup ecosystem

Lead, inspire, and leave a lasting mark! Play a pivotal role in helping startup leaders navigate scaling and build your reputation as a respected expert in the field. Apply now — time is running out! TC All Stage is set for July 15, but speaker applications close on April 18. Get your application in and be a part of this incredible event!

The post Apply to Speak at TechCrunch All Stage 2025 appeared first on Online Technology News.

Disrupt 2025 takes place on October 27-29 at Moscone West in San Francisco and celebrates 20 years of being the epicenter of innovation. Connect with 10,000+ tech leaders, dive into 250+ sessions, gain valuable insights from 200+ experts, and, of course, see the epic Startup Battlefield 200 pitch competition. Some of our legendary former speakers and TechCrunch staff will also return to the stages this year. 

Register now and you can secure the biggest Disrupt ticket savings of 2025.

Why attend TechCrunch Disrupt 2025?

At Disrupt 2025, you’ll be able to experience Main Stage talks with industry pioneers, participate in interactive breakout and roundtable sessions, find unmatched 1:1 and small-group networking, and discover the latest innovations in technology in the Expo Hall.

You’ll also be able to watch TechCrunch-selected startups participate in Startup Battlefield, the ultimate global startup competition. Witness innovative early-stage startups take center stage in a pitch competition like no other for a shot at a $100,000 equity-free prize and the Disrupt Cup — and learn from world-renowned VC judges along the way. Startup Battlefield has more than 1,500 alumni, including Trello, Mint, Dropbox, Discord, and Cloudflare. 

Don’t miss your limited-time shot at savings. Get your Disrupt 2025 tickets at the best prices before the rates go up after February 28. 

20 years of innovation at TechCrunch Disrupt

For two decades, TechCrunch Disrupt has been the hub for founders, tech leaders, and investors to drive the future of entrepreneurship and innovation. Here are just some of the groundbreaking leaders who’ve appeared on the Disrupt stage:

• Alex Pall and Drew Taggart from The Chainsmokers, Co-founders and Partners, MANTIS Venture Capital
• Assaf Rappaport, Co-founder and CEO, Wiz
• Bridgit Mendler, CEO, Northwood Space
• Colin Kaepernick, Founder and CEO, Lumi
• Denise Dresser, CEO, Slack
• Erin and Sara Foster, Co-founders and General Partners, Oversubscribed Ventures
• Mary Barra, CEO, General Motors
• Matt Mullenweg, Co-founder, WordPress and CEO, Automattic
• Peter Beck, Founder and CEO, Rocket Lab
• Serena Williams, Founding and Managing Partner, Serena Ventures
• Shaquille O’Neal, Entrepreneur and Philanthropist
• Vinod Khosla, Founder, Khosla Ventures
• RJ Scaringe, CEO, Rivian

Get your tickets at the lowest prices of the year

Don’t let $1,130 in savings pass you by. Register now to secure the best ticket rates of the year before this deal ends on February 28 at 11:59 p.m. PT.

Want to get more deals and special promotions for TechCrunch events? Join our TechCrunch Events newsletter and be the first to know when they happen.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

See the impact for yourself — watch the video below to hear how our partners thrive with us.

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There’s never been a better time to network with the minds shaping AI’s future. From startup founders to AI investors to aspiring innovators, TC Sessions: AI is where you can explore the industry from every angle. Whether you’re building, funding, or learning, join us for a full day immersed in the latest AI breakthroughs on June 5 at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall. 

Register before March 2 at 11:59 p.m. PT to save at least $300.

Gain invaluable insight from AI leaders

Experience AI innovation firsthand! Join 1,200 AI leaders, VCs, and tech enthusiasts for a day packed with expert-led main stage talks, interactive breakout sessions, and hands-on demos of the latest AI advancements. Here’s a taste of what you can expect to see on the main stage.

How to launch a product against entrenched incumbents

This session will look at ways small companies are managing to stay relevant in a fast-paced and rapidly changing space. Featuring Oliver Cameron, previously the VP of product at self-driving startup Cruise and the co-founder of Odyssey, the program will provide an in-depth look at strategies entrepreneurs are applying in order to thrive as the AI competition intensifies.

Other speakers at TC Sessions: AI include Twelve Labs CEO Jae Lee, CapitalG partner Jill Chase, and Khosla Ventures partner Kanu Gulati. And that’s not all! Check out the TC Sessions: AI event page for the latest panel announcements and see who else will take the stage to share their cutting-edge insights.

Unlock cutting-edge AI immersion at the best value

TC Sessions: AI is where you can make the right connection to take your AI journey to the next level. If you’re ready to immerse yourself in the world of AI, register now and save up to $325 on select tickets. This deal ends on March 2 at 11:59 p.m. PT, so act fast.

Want more deals and special promotions for TechCrunch events? Join our TechCrunch Events newsletter and be the first to know when they happen.

Speak at TechCrunch Sessions: AI

The clock’s ticking — we need AI leaders like you! TC Sessions: AI is calling on visionary experts to lead game-changing discussions with top tech innovators and entrepreneurs. Apply by March 7 for your chance to share your expertise and shape the future of AI.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TechCrunch Sessions: AI? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

The post 4 days left to save up to $325 at TechCrunch Sessions: AI appeared first on Online Technology News.

Most night vision technology is still analog. Goggles use optical lenses and a chemical process to convert the scant light at night into images, Young told TechCrunch. And they cost from $13,000 to $30,000 apiece from military contractors like L3Harris and Elbit America.

For years, the U.S. Army has been trying to digitize the tech, mostly focused on the hardware. A case in point: the $22 billion budget for the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) project that Anduril just took over from Microsoft and its Hololens tech.

Young, who has a degree in computational photography from CalPoly, spent five years working on smartphone camera software. He wrote code that offset the limitations of the tiny aperture, cheap $50 digital cameras used in smartphones. And Li’s background is in AI tech, particularly computer vision.

One day, Young read a scientific paper from 2018 called Learning to See in the Dark co-authored by well-known scientist Vladlen Koltun, who is currently at Apple. It discussed using AI for low-light imaging, but at the time, on-device AI chips weren’t fast enough to support the 90 frames per second (fps) necessary for realtime viewing.

In 2024, Young realized that AI accelerators running on System on Chips (SoCs) had advanced enough to support 90 fps. He talked his friend Li into quitting their jobs and founding a startup called Deepnight. And they promptly got into the Y Combinator winter cohort.

Their smartphone app wows the military

The military was their first obvious customer, but they couldn’t just roll up to the Pentagon and book a meeting. So, Young found an industry event where people from the U.S. Army’s night vision laboratory were in attendance.

He wrote a white paper that outlined his idea: night vision as a software problem. He handed out copies at the event, including to an army colonel who agreed to read the paper. “It was just a hallway conversation. I wasn’t even in business attire. Just a T-shirt,” Young recalls.

The colonel liked what he read enough to put the founders in touch with people at the lab, formally known as the US Army C5ISR Center.

Desperate to show those folks that their concept would work, the founders built a night vision smartphone app. They put the smartphone into a smartphone-holding VR set.

It was a rudimentary prototype that was impressive enough enough to lead to their first sale.

“The army awarded us a $100,000 contract in February 2024, one month into Y Combinator, based on the proof of concept in a smartphone demo and our whitepapers and presentation,” Young said.

Young and Li then had to present their progress in a more formal demo. The pair flew to Washington D.C. to show a room packed with 10 people how their software worked as well as state-of-the-art goggles, Young said. (Here’s a YouTube video where they demo their tech.)

The meeting led to more contracts. A year after launching, the startup has booked about $4.6 million in contracts from the federal government, including the US Army and Air Force, as well as with companies like Sionyx and SRI International.

Deepnight also promptly attracted investors. By the end of YC, it raised a $5.5 million round led by Initialized Capital, with angels like Kulveer Taggar, former In-Q-Tel partner Brian Shin, and Matthew Bellamy, lead singer of the band Muse. Y Combinator also chipped in their standard deal.

Perhaps best of all, Koltun, the scientist who wrote the paper that inspired the company, also became an angel investor.

Deepnight offers software and partners with hardware makers like goggle manufacturers or military helmets or other products.

“Now we can make everything in the world see in the dark, because it’s just a software program. So that’s automotive, security, drones, maritime like boats, electronics, nav cameras,” Young describes. And because it all relies on an off-the-shelf $50 smartphone camera, their tech doesn’t need expensive bespoke hardware.

The post YC grad Deepnight nabs $5.5M for AI night vision software that disrupts a multi-billion dollar industry appeared first on Online Technology News.

“AI startups are like rockets — they need to launch fast, but they also need to be built to last,” says Gradient Ventures partner Eylul Kayin, who works on everything from seed-stage investments to helping companies scale.

Today on Equity, Mary Ann Azevedo sits down with Eylul to explore the fast-evolving world of artificial intelligence startups. The pair dig into what makes a successful AI startup, the importance of quality product offerings, and the fast-moving nature of AI innovation. Founded in 2017, Gradient Ventures is a San Francisco-based venture fund started by Google that is focused on “investing at the forefront of artificial intelligence.”

Listen to the full episode to hear more about:

• Key challenges founders face, including building strong customer relationships to navigating technical hurdles
• Gradient Ventures’ approach to funding and supporting AI startups, especially how to strike a balance between vertical expertise and rapid product development
• Eylul’s experience as a judge for TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield 2024, and tips for entrepreneurs pitching their ideas to investors. And if you’re a founder interested in applying, the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 200 applications are officially open — so be sure to check it out!

Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. 

Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes here.

The post How Gradient Ventures is shaping the AI startup landscape with Eylul Kayin appeared first on Online Technology News.

Inception, a new Palo Alto-based company started by Stanford computer science professor Stefano Ermon, claims to have developed a novel AI model based on “diffusion” technology. Inception calls it a diffusion-based large language model, or a “DLM” for short.

The generative AI models receiving the most attention now can be broadly divided into two types: large language models (LLMs) and diffusion models. LLMs, built on the transformer architecture, are used for text generation. Meanwhile, diffusion models, which power AI systems like Midjourney and OpenAI’s Sora, are mainly used to create images, video, and audio. 

Inception’s model offers the capabilities of traditional LLMs, including code generation and question-answering, but with significantly faster performance and reduced computing costs, according to the company.

Ermon told TechCrunch that he has been studying how to apply diffusion models to text for a long time in his Stanford lab. His research was based on the idea that traditional LLMs are relatively slow compared to diffusion technology.   

With LLMs, “you cannot generate the second word until you’ve generated the first one, and you cannot generate the third one until you generate the first two,” Ermon said. 

Ermon was looking for a way to apply a diffusion approach to text because, unlike with LLMs, which work sequentially, diffusion models start with a rough estimate of data they’re generating (e.g. ,a picture), and then bring the data into focus all at once.

Ermon hypothesized generating and modifying large blocks of text in parallel was possible with diffusion models. After years of trying, Ermon and a student of his achieved a major breakthrough, which they detailed in a research paper published last year.

Recognizing the advancement’s potential, Ermon founded Inception last summer, tapping two former students, UCLA professor Aditya Grover and Cornell professor Volodymyr Kuleshov, to co-lead the company. 

While Ermon declined to discuss Inception’s funding, TechCrunch understands that the Mayfield Fund has invested.

Inception has already secured several customers, including unnamed Fortune 100 companies, by addressing their critical need for reduced AI latency and increased speed, Emron said.

“What we found is that our models can leverage the GPUs much more efficiently,” Ermon said, referring to the computer chips commonly used to run models in production. “I think this is a big deal. This is going to change the way people build language models.”

Inception offers an API as well as on-premises and edge device deployment options, support for model fine-tuning, and a suite of out-of-the-box DLMs for various use cases. The company claims its DLMs can run up to 10x faster than traditional LLMs while costing 10x less.

“Our ‘small’ coding model is as good as [OpenAI’s] GPT-4o mini while more than 10 times as fast,” a company spokesperson told TechCrunch. “Our ‘mini’ model outperforms small open-source models like [Meta’s] Llama 3.1 8B and achieves more than 1,000 tokens per second.”

“Tokens” is industry parlance for bits of raw data. One thousand tokens per second is an impressive speed indeed, assuming Inception’s claims hold up.

The post Inception emerges from stealth with a new type of AI model appeared first on Online Technology News.

Founded in June 2023 by CEO Ty Dunn and CTO Nate Sesti (pictured above), Y Combinator alum Continue has already garnered some 23,000 stars on GitHub and 11,000 Discord community members over the past couple of years. To build on this momentum, Continue is announcing version 1.0 of its product, supported by a fresh $3 million in seed funding.

Coding assistant explosion

Continue’s launch comes amid an explosion in AI coding assistants like GitHub Copilot and Google’s Gemini Code Assist, not to mention younger upstarts such as Codeium and Cursor, which have raised bucketloads of cash from investors.

Continue, for its part, pitches itself as “the leading open-source AI code assistant” that can connect with any model and lets teams add their own context by pulling in data from platforms like Jira or Confluence.

With their models and context connected, developers can create custom autocomplete and chat experiences directly inside their coding environment. Autocomplete, for instance, provides in-line code suggestions as they type, while chat allows users to ask questions about a specific piece of code. The edit function also enables users to modify code by describing what changes they want to make.

The product facet of today’s announcement includes the first “major” release of Continue’s open source extensions for VS Code and JetBrains.

“This signals to enterprises that this is a stable project you can bet on and build on,” Dunn told TechCrunch in an interview.

Separately, Continue is also launching a new hub, which can be likened to something like Docker Hub, GitHub, or Hugging Face — a place for developers to create and share custom AI code assistants, replete with a registry for defining and managing the various building blocks they’re made from.

At launch, the hub includes pre-built AI coding assistants, as well as “blocks” from verified partners Mistral and its Codestral model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet from Anthropic, and DeepSeek-R1 from Ollama. However, any individual vendor or developer can contribute blocks and assistants to the hub.

A block here could mean models, which let you specify which AI model to use and where; rules for customizing the AI assistant; context to define the external context provider (e.g. Jira or Confluence); prompts to pack prewritten model prompts for invoking complex instructions; docs to define documentation sites (e.g. Angular or React); data, which allow developers to send development data to a predefined destination for analytical purposes; or MCP servers, which define a standard way of building and sharing tools for language models.

“Culture of contribution”

The idea behind this new hub is that the majority of users won’t require deep customizations — they’ll only need to make minor tweaks to coding assistants or blocks that already exist in the hub.

This raises the question: What is the incentive for creating customizations and sharing them with the world? As it turns out, it’s exactly what drives open source communities elsewhere. Many of the launch partners are the very companies that create the underlying tools or models (e.g. Mistral and Anthropic), making Continue’s new hub an ideal place to curry favor with developers.

Moreover, the “open source ethos” is at the heart of what Continue is striving for. So if someone has created any customizations for use at work, then why not just share it with the wider community? Ultimately, Continue is positioning itself as the antithesis of proprietary “black box” AI assistant providers.

“This is a hub for the entire ecosystem to come together and work together,” Dunn said. “Instead of everybody building their own closed-source AI code Assistant, what if we had an open architecture where all of us can work together to create the building blocks people need to build tailored experiences for themselves?”

This is what Dunn refers to as establishing a “culture of contribution,” whereby developers are encouraged to experiment and create their own customizations while generating value for everyone.

“With Continue 1.0, we are enabling this culture of contribution for developers to create and share custom AI code assistants,” Dunn said. “This registry will be a place of discovery within and across organizations, which will grow in lock-step with the evolution of blocks and open, AI-enhanced developer tools.”

Then there is the data control aspect. In a more generic “one-size-fits-all” platform, the vendor can extract significant value from observing how developers operate at scale, and feed this decision-making data back into the platform to improve things for everyone. This type of activity has created controversy for the likes of GitHub Copilot, which has been accused of hijacking the hard work of millions of open source software developers for its own gains.

With Continue, the idea is that companies have more control over what happens with their data — they can share as much or as little as they like.

“When you use Continue, you get to keep your data,” Dunn said. “As an organization, you can pool all of your data for all of your developers in one place. That is not possible in the one-size-fits-all, black box code assistant, where their SaaS offerings and strategy is to take your data and use it to improve it for everyone.”

A model business

It’s still relatively early days for Continue, but the startup says it has worked with a handful of well-known businesses through the development phase — Ionos, (also an early Continue customer), as well as Siemens and Morningstar.

While large businesses are very much in its focus, Dunn says that Continue is targeting developers of all shapes and sizes, from freelancers and small teams through the gamut of enterprises. This points to how Continue will make money — its new hub ships with a free solo tier, but organizations that need greater control over their data can pay to access additional administration, governance, and security tooling.

“There’s a lot of interest from larger organizations, but we’ve also seen everything down to the individual developer who just wants some kind of customization for themselves. In those cases, I think the solo tier will be more than sufficient,” Dunn said. “But as that freelancer or small team starts to grow, and they need some amount of governance, then they can become customers.”

The free solo tier ships with three “visibility” levels. A developer’s contributions can be kept private, shared internally as part of a team, or made entirely public. Indeed, the solo tier can technically be used in a team setup; it just lacks some of the features that a team would typically require. A separate “teams” tier adds additional “multi-player” smarts to the mix, with admin controls for governing all the blocks and assistants — who has access to what.

The enterprise tier, meanwhile, ramps the data, security, and governance options up a notch with more granular controls over what blocks, models, versions, and vendors are used.

“The admin can also manage the security around credentials, where the data goes, and receive an audit log for the who, what, when and where of developer usage,” Dunn said.

Continue had previously raised $2.1 million after graduating from Y Combinator in late 2023, and it has now raised a further $3 million in SAFEs (funding with delayed equity allocation) led by developer-focused VC firm, Heavybit.

Dunn says the bulk of the fresh cash will go toward software engineering salaries, and it plans to “at least double” its current headcount of five.

“We’re using open source as a distribution approach, and so as a result, we keep our costs very low — we don’t need to capitalize nearly as much as other competitors,” Dunn said.

The post Continue wants to help developers create and share custom AI coding assistants appeared first on Online Technology News.