GitHub, a Microsoft-owned company, announced an enterprise subscription to its AI assistant Copilot, which can explain internal source code and provide recommendations to the company's developers.
This launch could help Microsoft take full advantage of its partner OpenAI's technology to increase revenue from its cloud business.
Microsoft was the first major technology company to release software that helped developers complete lines of code. In 2021, Microsoft launched Copilot, based on a set of code publicly available via GitHub.
One experiment showed that developers using the tool worked 55% faster. In December 2022, GitHub began selling business-focused classes for $19 per person per month.
Last month, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said GitHub Copilot had reached 1 million paid users.
The new GitHub Copilot Enterprise subscription costs $39 per person per month, and interested organizations can join the waitlist before the public launch in February 2024.
Those with a GitHub Copilot Enterprise license can select repositories to enhance Copilot with proprietary code, Copilot can query existing code fragments and suggest lines of code in the development environment, and Copilot learns as they go. It's time to summarize the code changes.
Copilot Coding Assistant promises to deliver insights into multiple languages and frameworks at any time of the day, though the system is still in its infancy and trusted by less than 10% of companies, according to market research by Gartner.
In its research report, Gartner recommends that customers base their evaluations on the productivity benefits of programming assistants and not rely solely on claims made by software vendors.
“These employees made mistakes that raised concerns among security officials,” Gartner said. GitHub recommended developers test, review, and verify code recommended by Copilot.
Analysts estimate that GitHub Copilot could generate annual revenue of about $3 billion by 2026, assuming 16% of GitHub's 100 million users use it.