🌊 Developer-First #136 - Are you ready for AGI?
Altman, Amodei and others believe AGI is near. What role will you play in this revolution?
Hello friend,
Sam Altman recently published some reflections about the past two years since the launch of ChatGPT. While so much has happened in the AI and software industry in so little time, what struck me most from the essay is that Altman is convinced we are very close to AGI.
We are now confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it. We believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents “join the workforce” and materially change the output of companies. We continue to believe that iteratively putting great tools in the hands of people leads to great, broadly-distributed outcomes.
Whether we agree or not, this conviction is shared by leaders like the CEO of Anthropic and many AI researchers. But here’s what’s clear: there has never been a better time for software engineers to start companies. The tools to fuel the AI revolution are here, and the opportunities to reshape industries are enormous.
One sector poised for massive disruption is IT services. AI agents could replace many back-office roles, such as writing requirements, generating code, testing software, and more. These agents will not just augment consultants but fundamentally change how software is developed and deployed.
For software engineers, this is the moment to seize. The foundation for AI-driven transformation is being built now, and those who take the leap could define the future of entire industries. What role will you play in this revolution?
P.S.: if you're a CTO or tech leader, consider joining the free Unicorn CTO Slack community. We're a small group of international CTOs and tech leaders, and we often meet for virtual (or not) coffees.
Now, let's dive into last week's developer-first transactions.
💰 Market Summary - Week of January 6th, 2025
3 companies raised $26.9 million across 3 product categories in 3 countries.
Europe-based companies attracted 36.8% of the total funding vs 63.2% for North America-based companies.
No Code is the category that attracted the highest funding.
0 company provides or contributes to an open-source product.
3 companies were acquired this week.
🧩 Funding by Product Category
🌎 Funding by Region
🏢 Funding By Company
Gumloop, based in Vancouver 🇨🇦, raised $17 million in Series A funding led by First Round Capital. Gumloop provides a platform to build and host LLM-powered automations, simplifying the integration of large language models into various applications. (more)
SignPath, located in Vienna 🇦🇹, secured $5.5 million in Series A funding led by TIN Capital. SignPath offers leading-edge software and SaaS services that secure the software production process, ensuring the integrity and authenticity of code from development to distribution. (more)
Jentic, from Dublin 🇮🇪, raised $4.4 million in Pre-Seed funding led by Elkstone. Jentic is developing a core integration layer for AI, creating middleware specifically designed for the AI era to connect AI systems seamlessly to the world’s APIs. (more)
🤝 Mergers & Acquisitions
Gluware, based in Sacramento 🇺🇸, was acquired by PE firm Cuadrilla Capital to enhance its portfolio in the tech automation space. Gluware offers advanced solutions for enterprise network automation. (more)
Tidelift, located in Boston 🇺🇸, was acquired by Sonar to expand its capabilities in securing and managing open-source software. Tidelift provides comprehensive management solutions for open-source software, helping organisations safely and efficiently use open-source in their applications. (more)
Quickwit, from Paris 🇫🇷, was acquired by Datadog to enhance its data analysis offerings, especially in handling petabytes of data efficiently. Quickwit is an innovative open-source search engine designed for massive scale unstructured data on object storage. (more)
⭐️ Trending GitHub Repositories
khoj-ai / khoj (✩ 6,297 stars this week) - Your AI second brain. Self-hostable. Get answers from the web or your docs. Build custom agents, schedule automations, do deep research.
unclecode / crawl4ai (✩ 4,051 stars this week) - Crawl4AI: Open-source LLM Friendly Web Crawler & Scraper.
stanford-oval / storm (✩ 2,665 stars this week) - An LLM-powered knowledge curation system that researches a topic and generates a full-length report with citations.
👍 Trending Developer-First Products on ProductHunt
21st.dev (👍 826) - Github + Pinterest to make your AI websites look beautiful.
TestSprite 1.0 (👍 736) - First AI agent automating the entire software testing process.
AI SDR-Kit (👍 676) - Build your own AI-Sales agent.