Datadog veterans launch AI coding startup Niteshift

Niteshift, a startup founded by former Datadog engineers, has raised $7 million in a funding round led by Greylock. Despite its modest size by AI standards, the project has already attracted influential investors such as Reid Hoffman, Olivier Pomel, and Alexis Lê-Quôc. This was reported by Techcrunch.com reports .

Founded by Sajid Mehmood and Conor Branagan, the company enters the highly competitive AI coding agent market with a fresh perspective. Their core question is: why should companies entrust their most sensitive asset, their source code, directly to model creators like OpenAI or Anthropic? These giants are constantly squeezing out smaller startups by releasing new applications.

Niteshift CEO Sajid Mehmood compares this situation to the early days of Datadog. At that time, many e-commerce companies were reluctant to use the Amazon Web Services platform because Amazon was their main competitor in the retail market. Today, companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are also entering vertical software markets such as law, healthcare, and finance.

Niteshift's strategy allows companies to decouple coding models from other infrastructure. This ensures that AI-generated code is properly verified and maintained. The startup aims not to completely replace tools like Claude Code or Codex, but to reduce dependency on them.

The Niteshift cloud platform routes between GPT and other open-source models based on project needs. This approach allows companies to use the best models without the risk of being swallowed by tech giants.