According to CNBC, former GitLab CEO Sid Sijbrandij has co-founded a new AI coding startup called Kilo Code, which just announced an $8 million seed funding round. The round, announced Wednesday, includes backing from investors like Breakers, Cota Capital, General Catalyst, Quiet Capital, and Tokyo Black. Sijbrandij, who stepped down as GitLab CEO last year but remains board chair, contributed early capital and is deeply involved, talking with the acting CEO Scott Breitenother multiple times daily. The startup, which now employs 34 people, has processed over 3 trillion tokens in the past month through its integration with OpenRouter’s API. In a related SEC filing last month, GitLab disclosed it paid Kilo $1,000 for a right of first refusal on any acquisition offer the startup gets before August 2026.
Another player in a crowded field
Here’s the thing: the AI coding assistant space is absolutely packed. We’ve got GitHub Copilot from Microsoft, which CEO Satya Nadella says already writes 30% of the company’s code. There’s Cursor, which just raised money at a $29.3 billion valuation. And let’s not forget the whole Windsurf saga, where Google scooped up talent in a multi-billion dollar move. So why does the world need Kilo Code? It seems the bet is on flexibility and being model-agnostic. Instead of being locked into one AI, Kilo plugs into editors like Cursor and VS Code and lets developers choose from a bunch of models via OpenRouter, including xAI’s Grok. That’s a different angle.
The GitLab connection and why it matters
Sijbrandij’s involvement is the real story here. He helped build GitLab into a public company worth over $6 billion. He knows the developer tools space inside and out. The fact that he looked at what GitLab was building internally for AI agents and decided to do this separately is telling. He even talked to the GitLab board about it. That $1,000 right of first refusal is a fascinating little footnote—it’s basically GitLab keeping a very cheap option to buy what might become a competitor. It’s a smart, low-risk hedge for them. For Kilo, having that pedigree opens doors and gets investors to listen, even in a noisy market. After all, Sijbrandij stepped down to focus on his health, but the pull of a new tech wave—what Andrej Karpathy dubbed “vibe coding”—was apparently too strong to ignore.
Beyond just coders
The most interesting pivot might be where Kilo says it’s going next. Sijbrandij mentions they’re working on an app builder for “people just getting started with code,” name-dropping startups like Lovable. That’s the real land grab. Helping experienced devs code faster is one thing, but enabling non-developers to build software? That’s a massive, if chaotic, market. Figma and others are already heading there. If Kilo can leverage its model-agnostic backend to power a simple, no-code frontend, that could be a much bigger play. But it’s also a completely different product with different challenges. Can a team built around a power-user coding tool pivot to serve total beginners? It’s a classic startup dilemma.
So what’s the verdict?
Look, $8 million is a solid seed round, but it’s table stakes in this arena. The technical infrastructure—processing trillions of tokens, supporting multiple models—sounds impressive. And having a user like the Dutch engineer who says it saved his teammate days on a SQL query is great social proof. But the road is insanely steep. They’re competing with the deepest pockets in tech. Their differentiator is being the Switzerland of AI models, but that also means they don’t control the core AI itself. It’s a bet on choice and flexibility winning out over a more integrated, opinionated experience. With Sijbrandij’s track record, they’ve got a shot. But this is going to be a brutal, expensive fight. We’ll see if the “vibe” is strong enough with this one.
