Artificial Intelligence · Profile from AI Research Companion
Poolside
The coding-model lab founded in 2023 by former GitHub CTO Jason Warner and software entrepreneur Eiso Kant on the thesis that the shortest route to more general AI runs through software: train models on code, then improve them with reinforcement learning from code execution (letting a model write code, run it, and learn from whether it works). Poolside chose to build its own foundation models rather than wrap someone else's, and to sell them to large enterprises and defence and government customers who deploy them inside their own networks, rather than to compete with Cursor or GitHub Copilot for individual developers. It raised ~$626m in its first two rounds ($126m seed in 2023 and a $500m Series B at ~$3bn in October 2024, reported) and then tried to become a vertically integrated "full-stack" lab, announcing a 2 GW data-centre campus in West Texas with CoreWeave (October 2025) and a ~$2bn round anchored by up to $1bn from Nvidia (reported). Both fell apart in spring 2026 (Financial Times, April 2026). By late 2026 Poolside had re-emerged as a maker of open-weight coding models (the Laguna family, April–July 2026) — a lab whose biggest bets failed but whose models kept shipping, until Nvidia's ~$6bn licence-and-hire-style deal in August 2026 (reported).
At a glance
- Founded
- Early 2023 by Jason Warner and Eiso Kant (reported); first described in the press as Paris-based (2023, reported) and later as headquartered in San Francisco with a Paris office (verify)
- Headquarters
- San Francisco (Bloomberg) with a significant Paris presence; staff in the US, UK and France; a monthly concentrated in-person work week in Paris (Globes, December 2025, reported)
- Ownership / structure
- Private. Investors reported across rounds include Redpoint Ventures (seed lead), Bain Capital Ventures (Series B lead), DST Global, eBay, Nvidia and others (reported)
- Leadership (2026)
- Jason Warner (co-founder; described variously as president, CEO and co-CEO — verify current title); Eiso Kant (co-founder; described as CTO and co-CEO — verify)
- AI products
- Proprietary coding models Malibu (agentic, longer tasks) and Point (fast code completion) (2024–25); Poolside assistant for IDEs and a desktop assistant (2026, verify); private deployment in customer clouds and on premises; AWS partnership (December 2024); open-weight Laguna models — Laguna XS.2 and M.1 (28 April 2026), Laguna XS 2.1 (2 July 2026) and Laguna S 2.1 (118bn parameters, ~21 July 2026; one wire release dated 24 August, verify)
- Scale
- ~150 employees worldwide (December 2025, Globes, reported); customers include the US Department of Defense, RTX and other defence-industrial firms (reported); revenue not disclosed
- Capital raised
- $126m seed (~$26m first, then ~$100m, led by Redpoint; reported August 2023); $500m Series B at ~$3bn led by Bain Capital Ventures (2 October 2024, reported); ~$626m disclosed in total. A ~$2bn round at ~$12bn with up to $1bn from Nvidia was reported in October 2025 and collapsed by April 2026 (FT, reported); ~$1bn from Nvidia at ~$12bn pre-money alongside a ~$6bn Nvidia licence (August 2026, reported; Newcomer and coverage)
- Key partnerships
- AWS (Bedrock and EC2, December 2024); Nvidia (GPUs, investor in Series B, proposed anchor in 2025); CoreWeave (Project Horizon anchor tenant and GPU supplier, October 2025, ended spring 2026); Google (talks over the Texas campus, spring 2026, reported ended)
- Signature moves (incl. failures)
- The founding and the RL-from-code-execution thesis (2023); the $500m Series B at ~$3bn (2024); Malibu, Point and the AWS partnership (2024–25); defence and private-deployment go-to-market (2025); Project Horizon, the 2 GW Texas campus (2025); the Nvidia-anchored ~$2bn round (2025); the CoreWeave exit and Series C collapse (2026, failure); the Laguna open-weight turn (2026)
8 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2023
Founding and the RL From Code Execution Thesis
Founding / funding round
2024
500m Series B at 3bn
Funding round
2024
Malibu Point and the AWS Partnership
Model release / partnership
2025
Defence and Private Deployment Go to Market
Launch / go-to-market
2025
Nvidia Anchored 2bn Round at 12bn
Funding round (announced in the press; did not close)
2025
Project Horizon 2GW Texas Campus
Compute deal / infrastructure
2026
CoreWeave Exit and Series C Collapse
Failure / restructuring (loss of anchor tenant and failed round)
2026
Laguna Open Weights Turn
Model release / pivot (from proprietary-only to open weights)