Investors are betting there’s room for another startup that uses artificial intelligence to help software engineers write code faster. The difference with Kilo Code is that it counts the previous one. GitLab CEO Sid Sijbrandij is also one of the founders.
On Wednesday, Kilo Code announced $8 million in seed funding with support from Breakers, Kota Capital, General Catalyst, Quiet Capital, and Tokyo Black.
Sijbrandij is a self-taught developer who helped popularize the GitLab tool for source code collaboration, deployment, and testing. GitLab went public in 2021 and is valued at over $6 billion. Sijibrandai stepped down as CEO last year to focus on cancer treatment, but continued as chairman of the board.
Since then, the technology industry has become obsessed with letting large-scale language models create and update software. This is a technique commonly known in Silicon Valley as vibecoding.
OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy is credited with coining the term in February. OpenAI had considered acquiring AI coding startup Windsurf for about $3 billion, but scrapped the plan. google hired senior windsurfing employees in a $2.4 billion deal in July. Rival Cursor announced a $2.3 billion funding round in November at a valuation of $29.3 billion.
in microsoftCEO Satya Nadella said in April that Vibe coding already accounts for 30% of the company’s codes.
Sijibrandi witnessed this and was fascinated by what AI could do for software development. In September, an acquaintance introduced him to Scott Breitener, who started and later sold the consulting firm Brooklyn Data.
“I thought it was just a meet-and-greet, and then after 25 minutes Sid said, ‘Hey, can we start next week?'” Breitenoser said.
Sigibrandi provided initial funding for the startup, which now employs around 34 people across the continent. Mr. Breitenoser is in charge, but he speaks with Mr. Sigibrandi several times a day.
Kilo Code’s software plugs into coding applications such as Cursor and Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code. This is OpenRouter’s application programming interface, which gives developers access to a variety of AI models, including Elon Musk’s xAI’s Grok Code Fast 1, and is the most widely used service for startups. According to OpenRouter, Kilo Code has processed over 3 trillion tokens in the past month. One token represents about three-quarters of a word.
Daniel Langesar, a software engineer at Dutch e-commerce startup Plug&Pay, said he has been using Kilo Code for several months after trying products from Anthropic, Cursor, Microsoft and others. He said he appreciates Kilo Code’s support for both premium and affordable models, and likes that people are publicly contributing to Kilo Code extensions under open source licenses.
Langesar spread the word. He said about 80% of Plug&Pay’s developers are currently using Kilo Code. This recently helped a teammate save time as he put together a complex SQL query.
“For Kilo, it took a day,” Langesar said. “If he didn’t have access to Kilo, it would have taken days to implement.”
GitLab, which is testing a platform for AI agents to perform tasks, was paying attention and was interested in what Kilo was building.
“I have had discussions with the board,” Sigibrandi said. “Ultimately, we decided to do it outside of GitLab.”
GitLab included a reference to Kilo in a filing last month. The company announced it paid Kilo $1,000 in exchange for a 10-business-day right of first refusal if Kilo receives an acquisition offer by August 2026.
The market is rapidly evolving. design software company figma And many startups are now offering vibe coding options for the less technical. This is a category that Kilo Code will never ignore.
“We also want to be a place for people who are just getting started with code,” Sigibrandi said. “We’re working on an app builder that’s more similar to the Lovable and Bolt experiences,” he said, citing two popular startups.
In July, Sweden-based Loveable announced a funding round at a valuation of $1.8 billion.
Spotlight: Google’s vibecoding efforts
