Poolside

Poolside offers Laguna, an open-weight family of agentic coding models, and tools for developers and enterprise teams. Its macOS Desktop Assistant runs multiple coding agents across projects and repositories, with extensions for VS Code and Visual Studio; the smaller Laguna XS model can run on-device. The Poolside Platform deploys agents inside enterprise security boundaries with auditability and governance. Its 2025 acquisition of Fern Labs added Bridge, a multi-agent orchestration layer, and engineers who work directly with customers on deployments.

Founded in San Francisco in 2023, Poolside is led by co-founders and co-CEOs Jason Warner and Eiso Kant. Its research uses reinforcement learning from code execution: compilation results and tests give models automated feedback as they practice software tasks. Its Model Factory automates training, evaluation and experiments with model architectures and data, making those experiments reproducible. These systems underpinned its foundation-model development before its reported strategic transition in 2026.

In August 2026, Nvidia reportedly agreed to a $6 billion non-exclusive licence for the Model Factory, job offers to 109 employees, and a separate $1 billion investment at a $12 billion pre-money valuation. Poolside remains independent, with its founders staying; the arrangement is not an acquisition. Poolside reportedly stopped building frontier models and had not disclosed its updated vision.