When looking at how genetic AI is being implemented in developer tools, the focus has mostly been on code generation, such as with GitHub Copilot. Greptile, an early-stage startup from a group of recent Georgia Tech graduates, decided to take a different approach: using AI to help developers understand the code base.
And instead of solely using a chat interface, as most vendors have done, the startup provided another unique change by creating an API that developers could plug into the codebase and build custom apps based on an AI-powered query. On Thursday, the company announced a $4 million seed round.
Greptile CEO and co-founder Daksh Gupta says the Greptile bot is like having a highly experienced colleague who has a deep understanding of your code. “So we’re building AI tools that understand large codebases in companies, because as time goes on and many developers work on the codebase, it tends to become very difficult to understand,” Gupta told TechCrunch.
“The API essentially has two parameters: One is that you plug in the repositories you want to be referenced and it makes sure they’re indexed. Once the repositories are indexed by the system, you add a natural language query like, ‘How does authentication work in this codebase?'” he said.
The startup launched last July after the founders came up with the idea for the company at a hackathon. They launched the product, quickly grew to about 100 customers paying $10 to $20 a month, and applied and got into Y Combinator for the Winter 2024 batch.
But even before founding Greptile, while still in college, the founders built a company feedback management chatbot and raised enough money to move to San Francisco, where they quickly learned there was a big gap in their knowledge when it came to starting a company.
“First we made the common mistake of focusing on attracting investors instead of real customer needs, building things that were reasonably good startup ideas instead of looking for real problems that real people had and solving them with technology. We did all these things. And we learned the hard way not to do that,” he said.
As they shifted their focus and became more serious, the pieces began to fall into place. “No one told us that what you are doing is the purest form of capitalism. You create value for people, so much so that they are happy to pay you for the value you create for them.”
Y Combinator drove home these lessons about being customer-centric. Today, they have 500 paying customers, including individuals, groups and organizations.
As the company grows, the founders have bigger goals. “We want to give software teams the building blocks they need to build custom, bespoke AI developer tools that are specific to how their system is set up,” Gupta said.
Today’s round was led by Initialized Capital with the participation of several prominent industry angels.
