JOHANNESBURG – HyperDev, a new AI technology company with operations in Europe and South Africa, has raised more than US$1 million (R15 million) in pre-seed funding from a network of European, American and British venture capital investors as its generative AI software development platform approaches 100,000 users.
Falk Albers, Managing Director of Reinsurance Intelligence Quotient (RIQ) and General Partner of Loom Ventures, said:
“While most Vibe coding tools are thin wrappers around third-party LLMs, HyperDev is building unique technology that makes code generation actually useful.
“This combination of real technology and built-in distribution is rare at any stage and exceptional at pre-seed.”
The startup has created its own AI called “Guide Mode.” This enables people to more efficiently and effectively use the code generated by large-scale language models themselves to ship working websites, apps, and other code solutions quickly. It also allows non-technical users to hire developers to ship more AI-generated software.
This solution addresses the failures of the first generation of AI coding tools. Tools easily spit out code, but often don't end up with deployable software that gets into the hands of real users.
The solution has been validated by massive growth, with the startup growing its AI coding tool to nearly 100,000 users in less than three months.
“All AI coding tools on the market are built on the premise that generating the code is the hard part,” said Piotr Sobolevskiy, CTO and co-founder of HyperDev.
“We built HyperDev because we knew the hard part was after, and no one else seemed to have solved it.”
HyperDev was built by a founding team that included Piotr Sobolewski, previously employed at OpenAI and contributing to the technology behind ChatGPT, and Riaz Moola, previously employed at Google, where he worked on AI techniques that became used in tools such as Gemini.
Both Riaz and Piotr have previously conducted AI research at major universities, specializing in AI that helps people understand and process the output of AI-generated models “at scale.”
Kenne Loubser, Chief Marketing Officer at HyperDev, said, “AI app builders have high user attrition rates, so retention is the most important metric. Since the launch of Guided Mode, we've almost doubled our user retention.”
“The platforms that dominate this space were built by people who assumed that developers would use AI in the same way that a small number of well-resourced engineers would use AI,” said Anton Mulder, head of product at HyperDev.
“Most builders in the world don't have that safety net. We built HyperDev for them, and growth tells us we were right.”
HyperDev works with users in 14 countries who use Guided AI to generate code and build a variety of software, including mobile apps, e-commerce stores, personal websites, fintech solutions, and edtech platforms.
HyperDev is also integrated with the HyperionDev educational technology platform, allowing users to improve their skills with university-supported technology education.
