Making waves in the tech world, Graphite, a New York-based AI startup officially known as Screenplay Studios Inc., today announced a $52 million Series B funding round. This significant investment fuels the company's mission to revolutionize traditional code review processes.
The round was led by Accel, a prominent venture capital firm. Menlo Ventures, through its $100 million Anthology Fund—a collaboration with AI giant Anthropic PBC—also participated. Other notable investors include Shopify Ventures, Figma Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and The General Partnership, all demonstrating strong confidence in Graphite's future.
Founded in early 2020 as a mobile development tool company, Graphite quickly identified the immense potential in the code review space and pivoted. Its core offering is a powerful AI engine that automates code review, providing real-time feedback and pinpointing potential errors and omissions as developers write new code.
Graphite's flagship product, a code reviewer called "Diamond," leverages large language models from industry leaders like Anthropic and OpenAI. Diamond's intelligent and efficient approach automatically summarizes pull requests and translates developer comments into actionable code modification suggestions. Graphite claims Diamond can identify issues ranging from minor bugs and complex logic errors to inconsistent coding styles and potential security vulnerabilities, all thanks to its immediate and high-quality feedback.
Image Note: Image generated by AI, licensed through Midjourney.
Remarkably, beyond identifying problems, Diamond intelligently suggests modifications based on human developers' comments within the codebase. It can even summarize code snippets, clearly explaining their design intent and functionality.
Despite Diamond's powerful capabilities, Graphite faces stiff competition. Dozens of AI coding assistants are on the market, with GitHub Copilot being a major contender. Startups like Poolside Inc., Augment Inc., Magic AI Inc., and Codeium Inc. are also vying for market share. Not to mention tech giants like OpenAI (recently adding code editing tools to its macOS ChatGPT app), Google (with Code Assist), and Anthropic (with its own coding assistance tools).
However, Graphite seems to have won over many developers with the reliability of its code suggestions. Unlike many competitors, Graphite allows users to define unique patterns for any given codebase and set filters to catch sensitive information that might leak security details, adding an extra layer of security.
Menlo Ventures' Rama Sekhar praised Graphite's Diamond, stating it "sets a new standard for code review, ensuring teams can trust and use AI-generated code at scale."
Regardless of the competition, Graphite's growth is impressive. The company reportedly increased its revenue more than 20x in the past year and its platform serves engineers at over 500 companies, including Shopify Inc., Snowflake Inc., and Perplexity AI Inc.
To further enhance its platform's appeal, Graphite is now offering its core code review service for free to teams of all sizes, previously only available to teams with fewer than 10 members.
Looking ahead, Graphite says the funding will be used to accelerate product development and expand its New York-based team.
Accel partner Christine Esserman expressed confidence, stating, "Graphite is becoming the go-to tool for the world's most forward-thinking engineering teams. It's becoming a critical layer in collaborative code writing between humans and AI agents."
