Dev tools (2025)

Dev tools aid technical teams in a number of areas, including code generation, security, review and testing processes. They aren’t replacing the work of humans, but rather supervising, automating and optimising. According to Sifted data, the median round size for dev tool startups in Europe increased 185% from €1.8m in the first half of 2024 to €5.1m in the second half. 2024 funding was as high as €1.2bn, and 2025 got off to an even hotter start in Q1 (€192m) than last year (€83m).

Categories experiencing investor demand right now include AI coding assistants and platforms that stop AI’s mistakes before production. Of the two, it’s the AI coding helpers that have attracted more money from VCs and none more so than French AI unicorn Poolside, which has raised €540m to date.

Many of these platforms still struggle to code quality software, and it’s tricky whenever code isn’t written by the people whose job it is to oversee it, but their promise to boost productivity is pushing companies to adopt them rapidly. Stockholm-based app and website builder Lovable, which recently reported it’s already hit $60m ARR, is one of the most talked about startups in this category and is reportedly in talks with investors for a unicorn valuation.

The promise of AI coding riches is nudging others to market: Paris-based chatbot maker Mistral, for example, recently announced a “vibe coding” product — to compete with Lovable and incumbents like Windsurf, Anysphere’s Cursor and GitHub Copilot — as part of a suite of new dev tools. Another European company with a slightly surprising (and growing) dev tool side-hustle is music streaming leader Spotify.

Still operating under the radar, meanwhile, are companies tasked with keeping AI on the straight and narrow. In an interview below, we talk to a German startup, still in “stealth mode”, that’s monitoring large language models (LLMs) to stop them from mucking up and embarrassing companies.