Why We Invested in Tangled

AI is transforming how software gets built. But we believe the most profound shift won't come from AI writing code, it will come from rethinking how developers and AI agents collaborate on code together.

The platforms we rely on today were designed for a world where humans wrote code, opened pull requests, and reviewed each other's work. That world is changing fast. AI-assisted coding has led to nearly a 50% increase in professional developers over the last three years, and autonomous agents are beginning to generate, review, and test code at a scale today's platforms were not built to handle.

Tangled is building the next-generation code collaboration platform to meet this moment.

That’s why we’re excited to share that byFounders led Tangled’s €3.8 million seed round.

A founding time that lives the problem

When we first met Anirudh and Akshay Oppiliappan, we were struck by something rare - two brothers with deep, complementary technical talent and a real obsession with the problem they're solving. They're building tangled because they believe a better platform for code collaboration has to exist.

Between them, they bring over a decade of experience building large-scale distributed systems, code intelligence platforms, and developer tools at Y Combinator-backed startups. Their ability to communicate a vision that resonates with developers, their speed of shipping, and their humility is unique and truly impressive.

"From the very first conversations we had with Anirudh and Akshay, I knew these guys were something else. They're building Tangled because they genuinely can't imagine a world where it doesn't exist. That kind of conviction is rare, and it's what makes us believe they can pull off something this ambitious." - Deina Kellezi, Investor at byFounders

A clear wedge in the market

The team has identified structural limitations baked into today's platforms - mutable pull requests, brittle CI, broken discovery, centralised identity - and is attacking them at the architectural level.

Their approach introduces new primitives like turn-based, immutable code reviews where it's always clear whose move it is and exactly what changed, reproducible CI that doesn't randomly break, semantic search and social discovery designed around what code does. And a protocol-based identity system where your contributions and reputation are portable assets you own.

Built on Bluesky's AT Protocol, Tangled enables interoperability across an open network, giving developers - and agents - true ownership of their work.

Timing is right: Europe needs independent AI infrastructure

We see several forces converging that make this the right moment for a platform shift.

Software development is moving from human-only workflows to multi-agent systems, where thousands of automated actors generate, review, and coordinate code continuously, something today's centralized, rate-limited platforms were not designed for. At the same time, the AT Protocol has reached real maturity, proving that federated identity at scale doesn't require trade-offs in user experience.

Add to that growing developer frustration with existing platforms’ stagnation in core workflows, and the parallels to earlier platform shifts become hard to ignore. 

"Tangled is built on the belief that code collaboration should be as open and social as the web itself." - Anirudh, Founder & CEO at Tangled

What excites us most

Tangled aims to be the place where software - written by both humans and agents - is built, discovered, and improved. A platform where code reviews are measurable, CI runs are deterministic, contributions are portable, and open-source collaboration becomes economically sustainable.

We’re backing a deeply technical founding team, a novel tech approach, and a market that's culturally ready for change, with the potential to build something truly generational.

We’re proud to partner with Anirudh, Akshay and the Tangled team on this journey.

Welcome to the byFounders family!

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