Poolside · Tools

Poolside

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At a glance

Price
Pricing on request
Vendor
Poolside

Specifications & properties

Key decision factors

Autonomy level
Supervised agent 1

Model

Available models
Laguna XS 2.1 (33B params / 3B active), Laguna M.1 (225B params / 23B active) 1
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Developer of open-weight foundation models for agentic software engineering, including the Laguna model family.

Profile

Poolside is an AI research company that trains its own foundation models for agentic software engineering, rather than building on top of third-party models like OpenAI's or Anthropic's. Founded in 2023 by former GitHub CTO Jason Warner and software entrepreneur Eiso Kant, the company's current flagship products are the Laguna family of coding models, released in July 2026, alongside companion tools for running agents in the terminal and cloud.

Who builds it

  • Founded in 2023 by Jason Warner (CEO, former GitHub CTO) and Eiso Kant.
  • Raised a $500 million Series B round in October 2024, led by Bain Capital Ventures with participation from eBay, Nvidia, DST Global, and others, valuing the company at roughly $3 billion at the time.
  • Announced a strategic partnership with AWS in December 2024 to offer secure, customizable generative AI for software engineering on Amazon Bedrock and EC2.

Core products

  • Laguna M.1: Poolside's flagship, most capable model, with 225 billion total parameters (23 billion active via mixture-of-experts), aimed at long-horizon agentic coding for enterprise and government use; its full weights are available on request to qualifying startups, universities, and institutions rather than published openly.
  • Laguna XS.2: a lighter, fully open-weight model at 33 billion total parameters (3 billion active), released under the Apache 2.0 license and compact enough to run locally on a single desktop or laptop GPU.
  • pool: a terminal-based coding agent, currently in preview.
  • Shimmer: a cloud development environment for building web apps, APIs, and CLIs, also in preview.
  • Both Laguna models are accessible through Poolside's own API and through OpenRouter, and are benchmarked on suites including SWE-bench Verified, SWE-bench Multilingual, SWE-bench Pro, and Terminal-Bench 2.0.

Pricing

  • Both Laguna models are free to use via Poolside's API and OpenRouter for a limited preview period; Poolside has not published what pricing will follow the preview.
  • Access to Laguna M.1's full model weights is on request rather than self-serve, and broader enterprise/government engagements are handled directly by Poolside rather than through published pricing tiers.

Who it's for

Poolside targets large enterprises and government agencies that want frontier coding models they can deploy securely and, where needed, customize on proprietary code — its AWS partnership specifically enables Bedrock- and EC2-based deployments for that audience. The open-weight Laguna XS.2 release also opens the door to individual developers, startups, and researchers who want a capable, locally runnable coding model without committing to a closed API, positioning Poolside as a counterweight to Chinese open-weight coding models from labs like Alibaba and DeepSeek.

Frequently asked questions

What is Poolside and what does it build?

Poolside is an AI research company that trains its own foundation models specifically for agentic software engineering, rather than building products on top of third-party models. Its current flagship release is the Laguna family — Laguna M.1 and Laguna XS.2 — announced in July 2026 alongside preview tools called pool and Shimmer for running coding agents.

Is Poolside free, or what does it cost?

Poolside's Laguna XS.2 and Laguna M.1 models are free to use via Poolside's API and OpenRouter for a limited preview period, but the company has not published pricing for after the preview ends. Broader enterprise or government deployments are handled through direct contact rather than a public price list.

Are Poolside's models open source?

Partially. Laguna XS.2 is released with open weights under the Apache 2.0 license and available on Hugging Face, so it can be run and modified freely. Laguna M.1, Poolside's larger flagship model, is not published openly — its weights are available only on request to qualifying startups, universities, and institutions.

Who founded Poolside and how is it funded?

Poolside was founded in 2023 by Jason Warner, GitHub's former CTO, and software entrepreneur Eiso Kant. The company raised a $500 million Series B in October 2024, led by Bain Capital Ventures with eBay, Nvidia, and DST Global among the participants, valuing Poolside at roughly $3 billion at the time.

Can Poolside be deployed securely for enterprise or government use?

Yes — Poolside announced a strategic partnership with AWS in December 2024 specifically to enable secure, customized generative AI for software engineering on Amazon Bedrock and Amazon EC2, targeting the compliance and data-control needs of enterprise and government customers.

What tools come with Poolside's Laguna models for actually writing code?

Poolside ships two companion products alongside the Laguna models, both currently in preview: pool, a terminal-based coding agent, and Shimmer, a cloud development environment for building web apps, APIs, and CLIs.