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Kilo

Category: AI Developer Tools

An open-source agentic engineering platform and CLI tool designed for 'vibe coding,' enabling developers to build, refactor, and manage software through natural language AI agents directly from the terminal. Kilo was founded in 2025. The company is led by Scott Breitenother. Based in San Francisco, USA. Team size: 35. Total funding raised: $8.0M. Latest round: Seed ($8.0M, Dec 2024). Key investors include ["Cota Capital","General Catalyst","Breakers","Quiet Capital","Tokyo Black","Sid Sijbrandij"].

Founded
2025
Headquarters
San Francisco, USA
Team size
35
Total funding
$8.0M

Value proposition

Delivers 'Kilo Speed' to the development lifecycle by providing a high-performance, terminal-native interface that supports over 500 LLMs, eliminating vendor lock-in and accelerating the transition from intent to code.

Products and solutions

["Kilo CLI (Command Line Interface)","Kilo Agentic Engineering Framework","Model-Agnostic Integration Layer (OpenRouter-powered)","Open-source Agent Orchestration Engine"]

Unique value

Founded by GitLab co-founder Sid Sijbrandij and data veteran Scott Breitenother, Kilo applies the 'open-core' and remote-first philosophy to the AI agent space, prioritizing terminal-first workflows over proprietary web-based IDEs.

Target customer

Software engineers, DevOps professionals, AI researchers, and engineering-heavy startups seeking model-agnostic development tools.

Industries served

["Software Development","Artificial Intelligence","Cloud Computing & DevOps","Enterprise Technology"]

Technology advantage

Extreme model flexibility supporting 500+ LLMs via OpenRouter, combined with a high-throughput architecture capable of processing trillions of tokens monthly. It leverages 'vibe coding'—a high-level, intent-based programming paradigm—to reduce developer cognitive load.

How they differentiate

Terminal-native 'vibe coding' workflow that is entirely model-agnostic, supporting over 500 LLMs via OpenRouter without vendor lock-in.

Main competitors

["Aider","Cursor","Goose (by Block)"]

Key partnerships

["OpenRouter (Primary model routing partner)","Cota Capital & General Catalyst (Lead Investors)","GitLab (Strategic alignment through shared leadership)","Open-source developer community"]

Notable customers

["Open-source developer community","OpenRouter power users"]

Major milestones

["Raised $8M Seed round led by Cota Capital in Dec 2024","Launched Kilo CLI 1.0 with support for 500+ AI models in Feb 2025","Reached #1 ranking on OpenRouter for agentic throughput within the first year"]

Growth metrics

750,000+ downloads; #1 ranking on OpenRouter; processing 6.1 trillion tokens per month.

Market positioning

Open-source agentic engineering platform for terminal-centric developers and power users.

Geographic focus

Global (Remote-first) with a primary business focus on North America.

Patents and IP

No registered patents disclosed; focus is on open-source IP and community-driven development.

About Scott Breitenother

Scott Breitenother was the founder and CEO of Brooklyn Data Co., a premier data and analytics consultancy that was acquired by Velir in 2022. He previously served as the Vice President of Data and Analytics at Casper (employee #16), where he built the data team from the ground up, and was a Management Consultant at L.E.K. Consulting.

Official website: