GeekWire’s startup coverage documents the Pacific Northwest entrepreneurial scene. Sign up for our weekly startup newsletter , and check out the GeekWire funding tracker and venture capital directory .(BigStock Image)There’s a trendy new term going around startup circles that is sparking questions about how AI coding tools could change the way early stage tech companies are built.Andrej Karpathy, co-founder of OpenAI and a Stanford Ph.D., established the phrase “vibe coding” in a post on X last month. “There’s a new kind of coding I call ‘vibe coding,’ where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists,” he wrote.There are various interpretations of “vibe coding,” but the general idea revolves around using AI tools to write code using simple text instructions, with little human intervention and without full knowledge of what’s going on under the hood.“I’m building a project or webapp, but it’s not really coding — I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy paste stuff, and it mostly works,” Karpathy wrote.Engineers debate whether this is an effective way to build software products, and what vibe coding is really all about.But perhaps the more important takeaway is the power of these tools and the impact on startups.Companies have been using generative AI to help with coding for several years now, but more advanced tools such as Cursor and Windsurf have supercharged the trend.“If you’re a startup and you’re not taking advantage of this, you better start experimenting, because this thing is here and it’s real,” said Kevin Leneway, a longtime Seattle-area software engineer. “It’s not magic, but it is very valuable.”Leaner and cheaperLeneway, a former startup CTO and developer evangelist at Microsoft, has spent the past year building an AI coding assistant and more recently published videos detailing his experience with Cursor.Part of Leneway’s current job at Pioneer Square Labs is to help quickly build and test new startup ideas. And AI coding tools have been a key part of his workflow. He said he’s writing three times as much code.“This is one of those rare opportunities where there’s actually a very big advantage for startups because you can move so fast,” he said

SAN FRANCISCO, March 4, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Harness, the AI-Native Software Delivery Platform™ company, announced it has completed its merger with Traceable, the next-generation API Security Platform, effective March 4, 2025.By joining forces, Harness and Traceable are creating the most advanced AI-native DevSecOps platform, enabling software teams to seamlessly develop, deliver, and secure applications. The combined platform eliminates the need for separate security and software delivery solutions, integrating security directly into every stage of the development lifecycle.With the rise of AI-driven development and increasing security threats, enterprises need a unified approach that ensures applications are secure by design. This merger delivers on that need by combining Harness' expertise in software delivery with Traceable's leading API security capabilities, providing customers with a seamless, automated, and intelligent DevSecOps solution.For more information, please visit www.harness.io .About HarnessHarness is the leading AI-native platform for complete software delivery. It provides a simple, safe, and secure way for engineering and DevOps teams to release applications into production. Harness uses AI and machine learning to monitor the quality of deployments and automatically roll back failed ones, saving time and reducing the need for custom scripting and manual oversight, giving engineers their nights and weekends back. Harness customers like United Airlines, Citibank, and Choice Hotels, accelerate deployments by up to 75%, reduce infrastructure costs by up to 60%, and decrease lead time for changes by up to 90%