Tabnine updates AI-based code-writing wizards for developers

Tabnine, which develops an AI-powered assistant for software developers that can anticipate code being written for specific apps and fill in gaps with the appropriate snippets, launched a new version of its time-saving application programming interface on June 15.

The company, which uses a freemium-plus-services delivery business model, also said it has eclipsed its API’s 1 million user mark by 2022.

Tabnine’s Tel Aviv based software has a long memory for finding reusable code in 31 languages ​​including Python, JavaScript, Java, C#, TypeScript and other languages ​​available today in both Visual Studio Code and IntelliJ IDEs , CEO Dror Weiss told VentureBeat.

“The use case of our product is very simple,” said Weiss. “Her developer writes code in her IDE, and she has a topline installed as part of her editor. We look at the generated code in real time and contextually query the AI ​​engine in real time. We then suggest pieces like the big next line or snippets or block of code that the developer needs. The app makes a really quick judgment on whether this is intentional and accepts the code. Most of the time, this happens with virtually no change to the process.”

“Ninety percent of all code is already written”

Ninety percent of all code is already written and doesn’t need to be built from scratch, Weiss said.

Developers are now seeing 30% to 40% of their code auto-generated using the Tabnine API without having to deviate, Weiss said. “No code is modified in any way from the standard workflow of writing code in your favorite editor, and it works for any major idea or code editor and any major programming language,” he said.

Over the past year, Weiss says, Tabnine has revamped both its AI models and its approach to integrating new models into its platform. Unlike a monolithic approach that prescribes a single AI model, Tabnine is now able to support any compatible AI model to provide guidance to developers, Weiss said.

From infrastructure-as-code to continuous integration, companies that have implemented Devops in recent years have seen productivity gains in their software development and release processes. But those productivity benefits have typically stopped at the developer’s keyboard because an explosion of frameworks, tools, languages, and APIs has only made a developer’s job more difficult, Weiss said.

AI has great potential to increase developer productivity

AI has the potential to do for developer productivity what CI did for the release process, Weiss said.

“Every day we get amazing feedback from developers and teams that Tabnine’s AI is now part of their workflow and freeing them up to focus on higher value activities again,” Weiss said in a press release. “With longer and better code completions, our next-generation AI technology is a huge step forward for developer productivity and further establishes Tabnine as a leader in AI-assisted software development.”

The new generation platform includes a dozen new AI models, each trained from scratch on code (vs. models pre-trained on text and retrofitted to learn code). Each model is optimized for a specific language or domain, allowing Tabnine to contextually complete entire lines of code and code snippets with unprecedented accuracy, Weiss said.

Tabnine, which was founded in 2017, also announced that it has raised $15.5 million in funding from Qualcomm Ventures, OurCrowd and Samsung NEXT Ventures, with participation from existing investors including Khosla Ventures, Headline Ventures, Hetz Ventures and TPY capital. With this latest capital injection, Tabnine has raised a total of $32 million to date.

Tabnine claims to be the only such AI-powered software development tool of its kind on the market, Weiss said.

The recent funding will be used to further accelerate development of Tabnine’s platform to add support for additional AI models and programming languages ​​later this year, Weiss said.