Augment, the startup company focusing on AI coding assistants, has quietly completed a financing round of up to $252 million, with a valuation close to unicorn level at $977 million. The company aims to revolutionize the existing software development model by leveraging artificial intelligence technology to empower software teams.

This round of financing is led by heavyweight investors such as former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and also involves well-known venture capital firms such as Index Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. This not only marks a significant step forward in the rapid development of generative AI technology in the software development field, but also heralds a disruptive change in the software industry.

Although the annual expenditure in the software industry has exceeded trillions of dollars, it often fails to meet the needs of business development in terms of program functionality and maintenance costs. The emergence of Augment Inc. not only demonstrates its promising start, but also indicates that the software industry is about to undergo a profound transformation.

Igor Ostrovsky, co-founder of Augment Inc., said, "Software engineering is rapidly evolving into a collaboration between humans and artificial intelligence. At Augment, we are fully committed to providing global teams with AI support to help them create higher-quality software."

Augment's AI platform aims to deeply understand code repositories and operate at a speed close to human thinking, supporting the entire team rather than individual developers, while carefully protecting intellectual property. Early customers such as Keeta have reported an overall productivity increase of over 40% for their developers.

Another co-founder, Guy Gur-Ari, explained, "Artificial intelligence has the potential to increase the efficiency of software developers by 10 times, but to achieve this goal, we need to delve into AI technologies specifically designed for code and combine them with advanced systems engineering."

The support from these influential venture capital firms fully demonstrates their confidence in Augment's approach of integrating cutting-edge AI technology with software engineering. The $227 million Series B financing (bringing the total financing amount to $252 million) will be used to accelerate product development, improve product, engineering, and go-to-market capabilities, and prepare the company for rapid growth.