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A young startup wants to help developers create customized , contextual coding assistant that can tie with any model and integrate seamlessly with their development environs .
found in June 2023 by CEOTy Dunnand CTONate Sesti(pictured above ) , Y Combinator alumContinuehas already garnered some 23,000 starson GitHuband11,000 Discord residential area membersover the retiring couple of years . To work up on this momentum , Continue is announcing variation 1.0 of its product , supported by a fresh $ 3 million in seed funding .
Coding assistant explosion
persist in ’s launching comes amid anexplosion in AI put on assistantslikeGitHub CopilotandGoogle ’s Gemini Code Assist , not to mentionyounger upstartssuch asCodeiumandCursor , which have raised bucketloads of cash from investor .
Continue , for its part , pitches itself as “ the leading open - source AI codification helper ” that can join with any model and lets teams add together their own context by pulling in data from platforms like Jira or Confluence .
With their poser and context connected , developer can create custom autocomplete and chat experiences directly inside their taunt environment . Autocomplete , for case , provide in - telephone circuit codification trace as they type , whilechatallows users to ask question about a specific piece of codification . Theeditfunction also enable user to modify computer code by describe what alteration they require to make .
The product aspect of today ’s announcement includes the first “ major ” press release of Continue ’s open seed extensions for VS Code and JetBrains .
“ This signals to enterprises that this is a stable task you could calculate on and build on , ” Dunn told TechCrunch in an interview .
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severally , Continue is also launching a newhub , which can be likened to something like Docker Hub , GitHub , or Hugging Face — a place for developers to create and portion out usage AI code supporter , replete with a registry for defining and managing the various building blocks they ’re made from .
At launching , the hub include pre - builtAI coding helper , as well as “ blocks ” from verified partnersMistral and its Codestral model , Claude 3.5 Sonnetfrom Anthropic , andDeepSeek - R1 from Ollama . However , any individual seller or developer can contribute blocks and assistants to the hub .
A block here could meanmodels , which let you narrow down which AI manakin to use and where;rulesfor customizing the AI assistant;contextto define the outside context provider ( e.g. Jira or Confluence);promptsto pack prewritten model prompting for invoking complex instructions;docsto define software documentation sites ( for example angulate or React);data , which permit developer to send exploitation data to a predefined name and address for analytical purpose ; orMCP servers , which define a standard room of building and sharing tool for speech communication models .
“Culture of contribution”
The idea behind this new hub is that the bulk of users wo n’t require deep customizations — they ’ll only need to make minor tweak to coding supporter or blocks that already exist in the hub .
This raises the enquiry : What is the bonus for creating customizations and sharing them with the man ? As it turns out , it ’s exactly what drives opened reference communities elsewhere . Many of the launch married person are the very companionship that produce the underlie tool or models ( e.g. Mistral and Anthropic ) , making Continue ’s fresh hub an ideal place to curry favor with developers .
Moreover , the “ open generator 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 ? finally , cover is place itself as the antithesis of proprietary “ disastrous corner ” AI assistant provider .
“ This is a hub for the full ecosystem to come together and function together , ” Dunn said . “ Instead of everybody build their own closed - origin AI code Assistant , what if we had an open computer architecture where all of us can ferment together to produce the edifice block hoi polloi necessitate to make tailored experiences for themselves ? ”
This is what Dunn consult to as establishing a “ refinement of donation , ” whereby developers are encouraged to try out and create their own customizations while give value for everyone .
“ With Continue 1.0 , we are enabling this culture of share for developer to create and share tradition AI code assistant , ” Dunn said . “ This registry will be a piazza of breakthrough within and across organizations , which will grow in whorl - step with the organic evolution of blocks and exposed , AI - heighten developer cock . ”
Then there is the data point control aspect . In a more generic “ one - size - fits - all ” platform , the vendor can extract significant value from observing how developers mesh at scale , and feed this decision - making data point back into the platform to improve things for everyone . This character of action has created controversy for the likes of GitHub Copilot , which has been accused ofhijacking the severe work of millions of open source software developersfor its own gains .
With Continue , the idea is that fellowship have more control over what happens with their data — they can share as much or as slight as they like .
“ When you apply proceed , you get to keep your datum , ” Dunn say . “ As an organization , you’re able to pool all of your data for all of your developers in one office . That is not possible in the one - size - fits - all , pitch-dark box code assistant , where their SaaS offering and scheme is to take your data and apply it to better it for everyone . ”
A model business
It ’s still relatively early day for Continue , but the startup pronounce it has worked with a handful of well - known businesses through the development phase — Ionos , ( also an former Continue client ) , as well as Siemens and Morningstar .
While large businesses are very much in its focal point , Dunn say that Continue is point developers of all shape and size , from freelancer and small squad through the gamut of enterprises . This points to how Continue will make money — its new hub ships with a free solo tier , but governance that need large control over their data can pay to access additional administration , establishment , and security tooling .
“ There ’s a lot of interest from large 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 level will be more than sufficient , ” Dunn say . “ But as that freelancer or lowly team start to grow , and they necessitate some amount of administration , then they can become client . ”
The free solo tier ship with three “ visibility ” levels . A developer ’s contributions can be kept private , shared internally as part of a team , or made only public . Indeed , the solo tier can technically be used in a squad frame-up ; it just lacks some of the features that a team would typically require . A disjoined “ teams ” grade adds additional “ multi - player ” smarts to the admixture , with admin control for governing all the blocks and assistants — who has access to what .
The enterprise tier up , meanwhile , ramps the data , surety , and establishment options up a notch with more granular control over what blocks , mannequin , 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 usance , ” Dunn say .
Continue had previouslyraised$2.1 million after calibrate from Y Combinator in later 2023 , and it has now provoke a further $ 3 million inSAFEs(funding with delay fairness allocation ) lead by developer - focus VC business firm , Heavybit .
Dunn aver the bulk of the fresh Johnny Cash will go toward computer software engineering remuneration , and it plans to “ at least double ” its current head count of five .
“ We ’re using clear source as a distribution approach , and so as a result , we keep our price very low — we do n’t need to capitalize nearly as much as other competitors , ” Dunn read .
