A second round for the GitHub Fund

The GitHub Fund, run in partnership with M12, reviewed more than 350 open source startups in its inaugural year across developer tools, AI and AI infrastructure, security, and cloud-native infrastructure. The fund’s thesis remains that open source is a viable financial model and that early investment strengthens both the ecosystem and GitHub itself. For 2024, the fund will back another cohort of companies, roughly 8 to 10 startups on par with the first year, with attention focused on AI, security, infrastructure, and DevOps.

What the first cohort looks like

Ten companies received investments in the first round. Several have been publicly named:

  • Bytewax — a Python framework and Rust distributed processing engine for event and event stream processing.
  • CodeSee — an IDE visualization platform aimed at collaboration on complex codebases, plus its Open Source Hub for highlighting projects.
  • Novu — a unified API and infrastructure for multi-channel notifications with support for custom workflows and conditions.
  • OpenSauced — analytics and insights tooling that measures open source projects and lowers the barrier to contribution.
  • Rubbrband — an open source evaluation tool that detects deformities in images produced by generative AI models.
  • ToolJet — an open source low-code platform for generating internal tools and business applications.
  • Unify (formerly Ivy ML) — an AI interoperability framework for autotuning and transpiling ML models across frameworks.

Additional names from the inaugural group are slated to be announced over the coming year.

Support beyond the check

The fund’s first-year work went beyond capital. Portfolio companies received benchmarking and community growth guidance, along with access to speaking slots and spotlights at GitHub Universe, the Start-it-up series, and GPU access programs for model training and tuning. Connections with product and leadership teams across GitHub and Microsoft supported go-to-market strategy, sales approach, and product differentiation, and in some cases led to design partnerships. The fund also hosted a founder pitch event at GitHub Universe 2023 and met with over 20 founders there.

The lessons from year one point to a clear demand: early-stage open source founders are looking to GitHub to take a leadership role in startup investing. ToolJet founder and CEO Naveenth Padanna Kalathil put it this way: sharing a project’s journey on GitHub builds connections with users, contributors, and partners that become instrumental in shaping the company’s mission.

What’s next

The fund expects its second round to open new paths for growing open source companies and careers, with particular enthusiasm around generative AI, LLMs, AI-powered developer tooling, and security. Open source-first companies, maintainers, and builders raising venture capital can register interest through the fund’s submission form.