AI coding assistant Cursor announced that it has acquired Graphite, a startup that uses AI to review and debug code.
Although the terms of the deal were not disclosed, Axios reported that Cursor paid “way over” Graphite’s last valuation of $290 million, which was set when the five-year-old company raised a $52 million Series B earlier this year.
The tie-up makes strategic sense. The output of code generated by AI is often buggy, forcing engineers to spend a lot of timeon corrections. Even though Cursor offers AI-powered code review through itsBugbot product, Graphite’s specialized toolset provides a distinct capability called a ‘stacked pull request,’which enables developers to work on multiple dependent changes simultaneously without waiting for approvals.
Combining AI-powered code writing with AI-powered code review tools speeds up the process from drafting code to shipping it.
Other startups providing AI-powered code review include CodeRabbit, valued at $550 millionin September, and a smaller competitor, Greptile, which announced a $25 million Series Athis fall.
Michael Truell, co-founder and CEO of Cursor, first met Graphite’s co-founders, Merrill Lutsky, Greg Foster, and Thomas Reimers, before launching the company as a Neo Scholar, a prestigious program for college students run byNeo, Ali Partovi’s early-stage venture firm. Neo backed Graphite at the seed stage, according to PitchBook data.
Furthermore, both Cursor and Graphite have other investors in common, including Accel and Andreessen Horowitz.
Cursor, which was last at$29 billionin November, has been on an acquisition spree. Last month, it purchasedGrowth by Design, a tech recruiting strategy company. In July, Cursor scooped up the talent fromAI-powered CRM startup Koalafor a post-money valuation of $129 million, according to PitchBook.
Source: Techcrunch
