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AI Programming Agent Startup Niteshift Completes $7 Million Seed Round Funding

2026.06.13 21:20:12

June 13 — Niteshift, an AI programming agent startup, announced it has closed a $7 million seed funding round led by Greylock partner Jerry Chen. While the $7 million raise isn’t standout in today’s crowded AI space, the startup has secured backing from a roster of high-profile investors, including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Datadog co-founders Olivier Pomel and Alexis Lê-Quôc, Braintrust founder Ankur Goyal, and Reflection AI co-founder Misha Laskin. Proceeds from the round will be used to scale product development and drive market expansion. Founded by Sajid Mehmood and Conor Branagan, former early-stage engineers at Datadog who helped grow the company from a startup to a $10+ billion software giant, Niteshift’s core reasoning hinges on a growing enterprise concern: as foundational model providers like OpenAI and Anthropic expand into vertical software markets, businesses are growing wary of handing over their core code assets to entities that could become their competitors. Mehmood draws a parallel to early e-commerce firms’ anxieties around Amazon Web Services, framing the current AI industry shift as a "SaaSpocalypse" mirroring the historic "Retail Apocalypse." Unlike mainstream AI coding tools such as Claude Code or Codex, Niteshift isn’t looking to replace these tools. Instead, the startup aims to serve as an independent infrastructure layer connecting enterprises and model suppliers. Its bet is that in the future, businesses will prefer decoupling AI code generation from critical workflows like code review, testing, permission management, and day-to-day operations to cut reliance on any single model provider. Niteshift argues that as AI-driven software development becomes a core pillar of enterprise productivity, neutral platforms that don’t directly compete with their clients’ businesses will see surging demand. Click through the original link below to join the BlockBeats Beating · Feishu AI News Channel for 24/7 global AI hotspot monitoring and real-time news updates.
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