Based in San Francisco, Kite was founded in 2014 as an early pioneer in the emerging field of AI that assists software developers in writing code – an ‘autocomplete’ for programming.
But now, after eight years of pursuing its vision to be a leader in AI-assisted programming, founder Adam Smith announced on the company website that the business is currently wrapping up.
While the business could have been successful without necessarily increasing developer productivity by ten times using AI, Smith said that Kite’s delay and unsuccessful attempt at monetising the service prevented the start-up from taking flight.
Despite the time taken to get to the market, Smith said Kite captured 500,000 monthly active developers using its AI with “almost zero marketing spend”.
But the product failed to generate revenue because the developers refused to pay.
Sources: https://siliconrepublic.com/