Zencoder, a provider of AI agents integrated directly into developers’ environments, announced today that it has acquired Machinet, a developer of context-aware AI coding assistants with over 100,000 downloads in JetBrains IDEs. The strategic acquisition further cements Zencoder’s position in the rapidly expanding AI coding assistant market, while broadening its multi-integration ecosystem across popular development platforms.

Expanding the Developer Experience

Following the acquisition, Machinet users will gain access to a significantly enhanced developer experience, including:

• Enhanced JetBrains Integration

By combining Machinet’s specialized expertise in JetBrains IDEs with Zencoder’s existing support, developers can look forward to even more powerful tools tailored for these widely-used environments.

• Augmented Unit Testing

Machinet’s context-aware unit test generation technology will be integrated with Zencoder’s advanced testing agents, offering developers a more comprehensive and automated testing experience.

• Industry-Leading Customization

Machinet’s developer community will now benefit from Zencoder’s deep capabilities in understanding large codebases, adapting to team-specific coding styles, and aligning with organizational architecture patterns.

“This acquisition aligns perfectly with our mission to turn everyone into a 10x engineer by providing AI solutions that handle routine coding tasks and let developers focus on innovation,”

said Andrew Filev, CEO and Founder of Zencoder.

“By bringing our advanced coding agent to Machinet’s thriving JetBrains community, we’re fulfilling our mission to deliver the best AI coding experience regardless of development environment.”

Streamlined Transition for Customers

As part of the acquisition, Machinet’s domain and marketplace presence will be transferred to Zencoder. Current Machinet customers will receive detailed guidance on transitioning to Zencoder’s platform, which leverages its proprietary Repo Grokking technology and AI agents.

Existing Machinet users will now gain access to Zencoder’s full feature set, including:

• Advanced multi-file editing and refactoring capabilities
• Deep codebase understanding across repositories using Repo Grokking™
• Sophisticated self-repair mechanisms that automatically test and refine outputs
• Expanded integration with over 20 developer tools, including Jira, GitHub, and GitLab
• Access to Zencoder’s specialized coding and unit testing AI agents

Industry-Leading Performance

Earlier this year, Zencoder’s AI platform demonstrated benchmark-breaking performance:

• A 2x improvement over previous best results on SWE-Bench-Multimodal
• State-of-the-art results on the challenging “IC SWE (Diamond)” section of SWE-Lancer, outperforming top published results by 23%

With the integration of Machinet’s technologies, Zencoder aims to further enhance its capabilities, reinforcing its leadership position in AI-assisted software development.

Availability and Next Steps

Zencoder’s full suite of AI coding and testing tools, including the newly enhanced JetBrains integration, is now available through zencoder.ai, with subscription options ranging from free basic plans to comprehensive enterprise solutions.

Current Machinet users will be provided with detailed transition instructions in the coming weeks.

About Zencoder

Based in Silicon Valley, Zencoder offers powerful AI coding and testing agents designed to empower professional developers. Founded by serial entrepreneur Andrew Filev, Zencoder’s globally distributed team of over 50 engineers helps organizations accelerate innovation and ship impactful software faster. The company holds ISO 27001 certification, is SOC 2 Type II compliant, and is in the process of finalizing its ISO 42001 certification.

Lace AI, a startup using artificial intelligence to supercharge customer service for home service companies, has raised $19 million in total funding, according to company’s website referring a TechCrunch article. The Mountain View-based company disclosed a previously unannounced $5 million pre-seed round led by Canvas Ventures, and a new $14 million seed round led by Bek Ventures. Other investors include Horizon VC, Launchub, Snowflake co-founder Marcin Zukowski, and Vivino’s Heini Zachariassen.

Founded in early 2022, Lace is the brainchild of Boris Valkov, a former AI engineer at Meta who helped develop PyTorch. Drawing from his early experiences in his family’s grocery store and later engineering roles at VMware and Meta, Valkov teamed up with Stan Stoyanov to launch a platform that blends AI with customer service.

Lace’s software analyzes 100% of incoming customer calls for home services companies—like HVAC, plumbing, and roofing—to detect missed sales opportunities and improve booking rates. The company says some clients have reported double-digit revenue growth and claims a 1,000% increase in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in 2024, after beginning sales at the end of 2023.

Currently working with over 100 businesses, including A1 Garage Door Service and Sage Home, Lace operates on a SaaS model, charging per agent. With 20 employees today, the company plans to triple its headcount using the new capital.

Bek Ventures’ managing partner Mehmet Atici told TechCrunch the firm was drawn to Lace’s strong team and its focus on applying AI to traditionally underserved industries—an approach he believes represents a major opportunity.

Photo: Lace AI

The funding news was shared in an unconventional post on WunderGraph’s official blog, reflecting the team’s transparent and developer-first culture. In parallel, the company issued an official statement to TechCrunch offering additional insight into the strategic partnership with eBay and the broader vision for the product.

“Our investment in WunderGraph’s highly performant open source platform will help boost eBay’s API ecosystem and enable our teams to work faster and smarter in building products that help our sellers thrive,” said Bryan Woodruff, VP of Seller Experience Engineering at eBay.

Founded in 2020 by CTO Dustin Deus, CEO Jens Neuse, COO Björn Schwenzer, and CCO Stefan Avram, WunderGraph has maintained its U.S. incorporation from the outset. While most of the founding team is based in Germany, Miami-based Avram joined in 2022 to provide local leadership in the U.S.

Tackling API Sprawl With GraphQL

GraphQL, initially developed by Meta (then Facebook) in 2012 and open sourced in 2015, is a data query language for APIs designed to make data fetching more efficient. Rather than over-fetching or under-fetching data as is common with traditional REST APIs, GraphQL allows clients to request precisely the data they need. This efficiency has made it a cornerstone of modern software architecture, especially as companies adopt microservices.

However, with the proliferation of APIs, managing and orchestrating them at scale becomes increasingly complex. That’s where WunderGraph steps in. The company originally offered a software development kit (SDK) to help unify disparate APIs—including REST, SOAP, and databases like MySQL. In 2023, it secured a $3 million seed round to build what it dubbed a “GitHub for APIs,” a collaborative platform for discovering and sharing APIs.

At the same time, Apollo was making significant headway in GraphQL Federation, an approach to help multiple development teams collaborate on large, distributed applications. But Apollo’s shift in late 2021 from an open source MIT license to a proprietary Elastic License created an opening for competition.

“Our data showed that some people were really looking for an open source alternative to Apollo Federation,” Neuse told TechCrunch. “We figured our current approach is not working, so let’s just put out an open source alternative to Apollo Federation.”

In response, WunderGraph launched Cosmo in late 2023—a fully open source GraphQL federation platform.

Strategic Alignment With eBay

WunderGraph serves as the main maintainer of Cosmo and offers services like hosting, premium support, and integration assistance for analytics, authentication, and observability. While large enterprises can build their own in-house solutions, many prefer to rely on externally supported products like Cosmo, backed by service-level agreements (SLAs).

This is where the collaboration with eBay becomes pivotal. eBay gains the customization and openness of a flexible GraphQL federation solution, while WunderGraph benefits from eBay’s real-world design input and use case validation.

“I would say we are experts in federation, but we don’t have experience in eBay-scale problems,” Neuse explained. “By having this very close relationship, they taught us everything in terms of how we need to build our product so that it can be integrated into companies like eBay.”

This includes making Cosmo modular enough for companies to adopt only the components they need—something that aligns with enterprise concerns about vendor lock-in. According to Neuse, open source is the only viable path forward for widespread adoption:

“This market needs to be as wide as possible. How can we attract everybody? It must be open source. We cannot limit how people use it.”

Looking Ahead

With $7.5 million in fresh capital, WunderGraph aims to expand its 20-person team and enhance its open source GraphQL federation with tools tailored for collaboration and governance—critical for supporting distributed teams at enterprise scale.

“Open source is the future of API management, and enterprises are demanding transparency, flexibility, and control,” said co-founder Stefan Avram. “We’re building the essential plumbing for the world’s biggest platforms, and this funding allows us to scale while keeping our commitment to open source development.”

One of the highlights for Sirma in 2024 was the consolidation of six subsidiaries under a unified  brand. This strategic move aimed to optimize operations, expand service offerings, and  strengthen client relationships. The consolidation already has positive financial effects, with  improved processes and increased efficiency leading to expanding business opportunities.

Momchil Zarev, Chief Growth Officer at Sirma, commented on the restructuring process:

“We are working towards providing maximum transparency so that more people can  understand the potential of the business we are developing. Whenever there is a  merger, there are initial structural changes, but that is part of the process.”

Momchil Zarev, Chief Growth Officer at Sirma

As part of its expansion strategy, Sirma acquired a majority stake in the Romanian technology  company Roweb Development. This acquisition not only expands Sirma’s market presence but  also aligns with the company’s ambition to become the leading IT provider in the Balkan region.  The Romanian market, being three times larger than Bulgaria’s, presents significant growth  opportunities. Sirma is actively seeking companies with more than 100 employees in the region,  particularly those, expanding into Western European markets.

Employee development remained a top priority for Sirma in 2024. Over 90 professionals  participated in skill development programs, reflecting the company’s commitment to the  personal and professional growth of its team.

“Unlike many other software companies, we have chosen to invest in our team and  enhance their qualifications at this moment. Sirma sets long-term goals that require  continuous development of high-quality specialists and know-how,”

Zarev added.

Although consolidation is often associated with cost optimization, Sirma has taken a different  approach:

“Almost always, when companies restructure, there are optimizations (in terms of staff).  In our case, these optimizations have been minor – below 1% so far. The goal of the  merger was not about optimization but rather the opposite – to achieve better results with  our existing resources. Our approach was somewhat different – we aimed to generate  business growth rather than just optimization.”

Among the company’s long-term objectives is listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and  expanding into the German market, where Sirma already has significant clients. Positive  feedback from these clients further strengthens the company’s confidence in this direction. The  NASDAQ remains the ultimate long-term goal for Sirma, making its shares accessible to a  broader range of investors.

For Sirma, 2024 was a year of transformation, marked by successful projects, strategic  acquisitions, and a strong commitment to employee development. Moving into 2025, the  company will continue to expand its services in key verticals such as software development,  business and technology consulting for banking, fintech, insurance, transportation, digital  healthcare, logistics, hospitality, e-commerce, public sector, cross-industry, and packaging industries. Sirma’s dedication to innovation remains a driving force in redefining industry  standards and supporting business growth across various fields.

Content and images courtesy of Sirma

$6 billion in a single venture round is an enormous sum. However, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been discussing efforts to raise trillions to build the chip-making infrastructure needed for advanced AI.

The official announcement said that the company has made significant progress since its launch in July 2023. In November, xAI released its Grok-1 model on X, followed by the recent introduction of the improved Grok-1.5 model, which features long context capabilities. Additionally, the Grok-1.5V model now includes image understanding, marking a significant enhancement in the company’s AI capabilities. The open-source release of Grok-1 has paved the way for various advancements, optimizations, and extensions in AI applications.

Looking ahead, xAI plans to maintain its rapid pace of development, with several exciting technology updates and product launches expected in the coming months. The newly raised funds will be utilized to bring xAI’s first products to market, build advanced infrastructure, and accelerate research and development of future technologies.

This substantial investment will support xAI’s mission to develop advanced AI systems that are truthful, competent, and beneficial for all of humanity, while also striving to understand the true nature of the universe.

Musk parted ways with the other co-founders of OpenAI long ago, but his AI startup, xAI, is borrowing OpenAI’s strategy of building larger models to achieve greater intelligence. This approach has proven successful so far, with OpenAI delivering impressive demos and anticipating further advances with its next big model, GPT-5, by year’s end.

There’s no guarantee that this progress will continue. Musk is known for tackling giant missions and delivering results, as seen with Tesla and SpaceX. However, his history is also marked by failures, particularly with software projects like Tesla’s autonomous-driving features and his efforts to revitalize Twitter under its new name, X.

Only a few existing companies – possibly Google, Meta, and Anthropic – are seriously competing with OpenAI in developing the largest language models, known as frontier models. These competitors have been in the game for years, while xAI is less than a year old. Hiring AI talent is currently very expensive, and the advanced AI chips needed are costly and scarce.

Rumors around the deal:

According to The Information, cited by Axios,  xAI plans to build a massive new supercomputer, dubbed the “Gigafactory of compute,” potentially in partnership with Oracle. Such a project could deplete this investment round before it even goes online.

Musk intends to use the real-time access to X’s data to help xAI create a more news-savvy chatbot, but there’s also a risk of recycling extremist misinformation. This is supported by the fact that he often blurs the lines between the companies he owns.

Some observers, including OpenAI in its defense against a lawsuit from Musk, suggest that Musk envies OpenAI’s success with ChatGPT and is building xAI to reclaim the spotlight. Musk and his supporters argue that OpenAI and Google are endangering AI’s future by implementing guardrails against hate speech. Pro-guardrail advocates believe these measures prevent chatbots from making horrifying statements, but Musk criticizes them as “woke” and “deadly” forms of lying.

Microsoft President Brad Smith will join G42’s board of directors. The investment expands the existing partnership between the two companies, and with this investment Microsoft will acquire a minority stake.

G42 will leverage its artificial intelligence applications and services in Microsoft Azure as well as deploy Microsoft’s cloud offerings.

G42 operates data centers and sells artificial intelligence applications. The company has developed an Arabic model for large languages called Jais, which will be available through Azure.

According to sources, the deal Microsoft is making with G42 is unusual. However, the company says the commercial partnership is “backed by assurances to the US and UAE governments through a first-of-its-kind binding agreement to implement world-class best practices to ensure secure, reliable and responsible AI development and deployment”.

G42 Chairman Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahya is also the UAE’s national security adviser.

The government’s involvement comes after months of scrutiny of G42 for its links to China. A few months ago, Mike Gallagher, chairman of the U.S. Special Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, urged the Commerce Department to “scrutinize” G42 to see if it should be blacklisted for commercial exports.

Gallagher alleged that G42 maintains ties to blacklisted Chinese firms, such as Huawei, and that it works with Chinese military and intelligence services.

Yet when these accusations came out, however, G42 flatly denied them and even reportedly invested in Chinese firms itself, including TikTok owner ByteDance.

Amazon’s total investment in Anthropic is worth $4 billion.

According to sources, Amazon had until the end of the first quarter to decide whether to increase its investment to a maximum of $4 billion, and a few months later – the investment is already in place.

Anthropic’s AI models are one of very few that compete at the highest levels of capability, but are available at enterprise scale for internal deployment or in consumer-facing applications.

OpenAI’s GPT AI chatbots and Google’s Gemini are well known among tech circles, but newcomers like Mistral could very well threaten the AI dominants.

They identify 2021-founded Anthropic as one of OpenAI’s biggest competitors, attracting billions in funding.

Anthropic has relationships with big tech companies like Google, which joined a $450 million funding round in May led by Spark Capital. Google and Amazon Web Services are partners in Anthropic’s cloud computing.

The company will use the new funding to continue to develop its technology and add new features to the platform.

“It has become a remarkably difficult task for developers to confirm crucial questions like, ‘What dashboards will this schema change affect?,’ ‘Can I deploy this code change safely?’ or ‘What data pipelines do we have that are not working?’” said Alon Nafta, CEO and co-founder of Foundational.

“The inability to validate simple code changes, and the lack of visibility and controls, and the time-consuming nature of data engineering create a dramatic bottleneck on innovation and adoption of data and AI”, he added.

By building partnerships with data organizations around the world, Foundational aims to redefine the way large-scale data platforms are built and maintained. With this funding, the company will continue to evolve its technology and introduce new product capabilities for data developers.

“At Tumba Solutions, we believe in the power of technology and the potential of our people. Our philosophy is rooted in the pursuit of excellence, innovation, and the personal development of our team members. This webinar represents an extension of our ethos, offering our team and the wider developer community valuable insights into making informed investment choices that align with their career aspirations and personal goals”, stated Emo Abadjiev, CEO of Tumba Solutions.

The support of the event is a testament to the company’s dedication to the well-being and success of Tumba team. The company understands that the growth of the company is intrinsically linked to the growth of people. By providing them with opportunities to expand their knowledge and financial acumen, the company is investing in a future where they can achieve their dreams, both professionally and personally.

Are you ready to make an impact? Click here to explore our current job openings and join the Tumba reality today.

The webinar “Tech Wealth: Strategic Investment for Software Developers” is more than just a discussion on financial investment; it’s about empowering software developers to make strategic decisions that will benefit them in the long term. Tumba Solutions is proud to be at the forefront of this initiative, supporting the continuous development and success of the tech community.

Read more:
1. Microsoft Invests €2B in AI Infrastructure in Spain
2. European Commission Investigates TikTok
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La inversión de @Microsoft en España se va a cuadruplicar y llegará hasta los 1.950 M€.

Quiero agradecer a su presidente, @BradSmi, su confianza en la economía española y en nuestra hoja de ruta para una transformación digital inclusiva y segura.

Además, hemos analizado las… pic.twitter.com/0PG1tZL08e

— Pedro Sánchez (@sanchezcastejon) February 19, 2024

Smith said it was not just about building data centres, but a commitment to help develop the “security, development and digital transformation of the country’s government, businesses and people”.

He added that the tech giant has been investing in Spain for 37 years. In September 2021, the company announced that a new artificial intelligence technology research and development centre would be established in Barcelona. It was then that Alberto Granados, president of Microsoft Spain, said that Microsoft’s investment is proof that Spain has the necessary potential to develop the digital sector.

This is the second major investment Microsoft has made in Europe within a month. Recall that last week the company invested 3 billion euros in the development of the artificial intelligence ecosystem in Germany.

Similar to its plans in Spain, over the next two years Microsoft has pledged to invest the funds in strengthening the AI infrastructure in Germany, building new data centres and training people to develop AI skills.

Major technology companies are increasing their presence in Europe by investing in the development of artificial intelligence, which in turn coincides with the implementation of EU legislation on artificial intelligence.

Read more:
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