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Poolside

What Poolside does

Poolside is a frontier model and agentic-coding company focused on building foundation models and the enterprise-grade systems that deploy them “inside your boundary” (VPC, on-prem, or air-gapped). Its products target software engineering teams that need AI-assisted development workflows—writing, understanding, testing, refactoring, and operating complex codebases—while maintaining control over model weights, data, governance, and auditability. The company’s current public platform includes open-weight Laguna-family coding models (for on-device/enterprise use) and an enterprise Poolside Platform for running agent workflows with containerized, policy-enforced execution and recorded “trajectories.”

Poolside’s flagship model family branding on its site includes Laguna XS.2 (a lighter, faster agentic coding model positioned for on-device use) and Laguna S.2.1 / Laguna M.1 (larger reasoning-focused variants for long-horizon coding). Poolside also describes a set of internal “Model Factory” systems that it uses to train and iteratively improve its models, including components for data pipelines, automated evaluations, reinforcement learning from code execution feedback, and large-scale code execution environments. Recent customer-facing expansion emphasizes enterprise deployments and offline/air-gapped capabilities, plus a growing desktop/IDE experience via Poolside Assistant that runs agent workflows with integrations into common developer tools.

Business model: Poolside’s enterprise offering is positioned as a deployment-first alternative to token-priced third-party API usage. The company describes predictable subscription planning along with full model-weight control, deployment modality options (bare metal/turnkey hardware via partners, VPC, and on-prem), and enterprise governance features (telemetry, auditability, redaction/encryption, and centrally defined boundaries).

News

Company record

Jul 28, 2026 · Official · PoolsideIntroducing Poolside Desktop Assistant, for macOS

Poolside introduced its macOS desktop assistant, describing multi-agent parallel sessions, conversation handoffs, and built-in connectors for multiple developer and search tools; it also describes local/offline model support via MLX and model downloads (including Laguna XS.2.1).

Jun 08, 2026 · Official · PoolsideShimmer shut down June 8th

Poolside announced the shutdown of “Shimmer” after a preview period, stating the company is now focused on Poolside’s foundation models and agentic coding products built on them.

May 26, 2026 · Official · PoolsideIntroducing Laguna XS.2 and Laguna M.1 (served at longer context and updates)

Poolside posted updates stating Laguna XS.2 and Laguna M.1 are served at 256K context lengths and noted stronger scores on SWE-bench Verified, SWE-Bench Pro, and Terminal-Bench 2.0; it also described public availability timing for open weights.

May 05, 2026 · Official · PoolsideAI, your way: introducing the Poolside Platform

Poolside announced the Poolside Platform as a production-grade enterprise system for running AI agents inside customer-controlled environments, emphasizing security/governance, recorded agent trajectories, and deployment modes including VPC/on-prem and air-gapped turnkey hardware partnerships.

Apr 28, 2026 · Official · PoolsideIntroducing Laguna XS.2 and Laguna M.1

Poolside released preview offerings alongside foundation models, describing the Laguna XS.2 and Laguna M.1 additions and their placement in the company’s Laguna model family.

Nov 18, 2025 · Official · PoolsideAnnouncing the acquisition of Fern Labs

Poolside announced it acquired Fern Labs, describing Fern Labs as a London-based forward-deployed research engineering company behind Bridge, a multi-agent orchestration layer for high-stakes production environments, and positioning the combination as a fuller stack for agentic systems within customers’ security boundaries.

Oct 28, 2025 · Official · PoolsideEnabling the Agentic Enterprise with Redpanda

Poolside announced a partnership with Redpanda to deliver vertically integrated AI through agents and multi-agent systems, aimed at high-consequence environments such as government and defense and Global 2000 enterprises.

Jul 28, 2025 · Official · PoolsideCitigroup’s Global Technology Banking Chief Philip Drury Joins AI company Poolside as Chief Investment Officer

Poolside announced Philip Drury joining as its first Chief Investment Officer, describing Drury’s background and positioning the role around structuring financial architecture for AI infrastructure while expanding customer and investor relationships.

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Funding

Latest disclosed valuationNot disclosed
Tracked capital$526M2 sourced rounds

What it builds

Poolside Platform

A production-grade system for running AI agents inside customer-controlled environments (e.g., VPC, on-prem, and air-gapped/turnkey hardware), emphasizing governance, security boundaries, containerized execution, centrally managed connectors via MCP servers, and recorded agent action trajectories for auditability.

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Poolside Assistant (agentic IDE and desktop experiences)

Developer-facing assistant experiences embedded in IDE workflows (IDE integration described via Poolside overview/quickstart) and a macOS desktop assistant experience that supports running multiple agent sessions, handoffs, and tool connectors out of the box.

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Poolside models (Laguna family)

Open-weight agentic coding models aimed at software engineering tasks, including smaller on-device variants (Laguna XS.2 / Laguna xs 2.1) and larger long-context reasoning-oriented variants (Laguna S.2.1 / Laguna M.1) served via Poolside products and deployment modalities.

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Key metrics

Milestones & partnerships