Datadog veterans launch AI coding startup Niteshift on a bet against Big AI lock-in | TechCrunch

Last day to exhibit your breakthrough to 10,000+ tech leaders at Disrupt is on Oct 2. Book Exhibit Table Now. Disrupt doors open Oct. 13. Get your pass and bring someone with you at 50% off. REGISTER NOW. AI coding agent startup Niteshift has raised a $7 million seed round led by Greylock’s Jerry Chen. That’s a modest sum by AI standards, but the startup, founded by two former early Datadog engineers, has attracted some big-name angels like Reid Hoffman, Datadog’s Olivier Pomel and Alexis Lê-Quôc, Ankur Goyal of Braintrust, and Misha Laskin of Reflection AI. Founded by Sajid Mehmood and Conor Branagan, who helped grow Datadog from its early days to a multi-billion valuation, the company has entered the crowded AI coding space with a compelling idea: Why would any company trust its most sensitive assets — code that runs its products — directly to model makers like OpenAI and Anthropic, given that those companies are constantly “killing” startups and businesses by launching competing apps? Mehmood, who is CEO, likens it to Datadog’s early growth, when the monitoring company won e-commerce customers who refused to build on Amazon Web Services. It was a reasonable concern, given that A