This week’s DevTools Weekly Roundup is all about momentum… and how quickly things can shift from quiet launches to spotlight moments.
Here’s what’s caught our eye this week:
Funding Wins
Needle Threads the Needle with $2.2M to Unlock Siloed Data for AI
Needle just secured $2.2 million seed funding, led by enterprise software and deep tech specialists 468 Capital and Presight Capital. Founded by CEO Jan H. and CTO Onur Eken, Needle tackles the common frustration of fragmented enterprise data, allowing businesses to instantly access and leverage valuable information hidden across systems like Gmail, Confluence, and GitHub. Thousands of users have already adopted the platform, which simplifies creating powerful, context-aware AI agents without needing extensive tech resources. Needle is now set to grow its engineering team and accelerate its market presence. Congratulations!
Onyx Finds $10M to Put a 24/7 AI Coworker at Your Fingertips
Onyx AI, co-founded by machine learning expert Yuhong Sun and anti-fraud specialist Chris Weaver, has attracted $10 million in seed funding co-led by Khosla Ventures and First Round Capital, joined by Y Combinator and notable angel investors. Onyx offers businesses an AI-driven “coworker” that instantly searches and retrieves critical information buried within tools like Slack, Salesforce, and Google Drive, eliminating tedious manual searches.
“Having worked at high growth tech companies, we experienced first hand the challenges of knowledge getting buried in disparate knowledge bases and becoming lost. We built Onyx as an open-source solution for companies to solve this challenge without needing to send all their data to external parties.” – Yuhong Sun (AI Insider)
With clients including Netflix and Thales Group, Onyx plans to further develop its open-source AI platform and expand its engineering and developer relations teams. Great news!
pgEdge Powers Up with Strategic Boost from Akamai and QRT
pgEdge, known for its fully distributed PostgreSQL database solutions, secured strategic seed-stage funding from cybersecurity leader Akamai Technologies and investment firm Qube Research & Technologies (QRT), bringing total funding to $23 million. Co-founded by Phillip Merrick, pgEdge uses active-active replication technology to ensure high availability and minimal latency for applications operating at the edge, including edge AI. Akamai’s Chief Architect, Michael Merideth, highlighted the synergy between Akamai’s edge cloud and pgEdge’s distributed database technology as a significant value add.
3, 2, 1… Launches
Hydra Makes Waves with Serverless Analytics on Postgres
Hydra just emerged to solve the longstanding headaches developers face when running analytics on Postgres databases—sluggish queries and resource-hogging workloads. Founded by Joseph Sciarrino and Jonathan Dance, Hydra separates compute from storage, powering lightning-fast queries (400x faster than standard Postgres!) without slowing down your app. By combining DuckDB’s isolated serverless analytics with the familiarity of Postgres, Hydra avoids clunky ETL pipelines and costly data warehouses. Perfect for everything from real-time monitoring to web analytics, Hydra lets teams scale easily without extra overhead. Curious to try it yourself? Setup takes seconds.
Watch the quick demo and get started with Hydra.
Coder and DX Join Forces to Make Developer Productivity Measurable
Coder, founded by Ammar Bandukwala, Kyle Carberry, and John Andrew Entwistle, has partnered with DX to transform how engineering teams quantify productivity. By integrating Coder’s cloud-based development environments with DX’s engineering intelligence platform, developers gain clear, data-driven insights into workflow efficiency, onboarding speed, and bottlenecks. No more relying on intuition, both companies plan to expand their collaboration further, exploring additional ways to enhance integration and deliver even more actionable insights. Developers interested in testing this out can start a free trial now.
See the full details of the partnership here.
Reworkd Makes Web Scraping Simple from Setup to Scale
Tired of patching broken scrapers or battling bot detection? Reworkd just launched a self-serve tool to automate your entire web data pipeline end-to-end. Founded by Asim Shrestha, Srijan Subedi and Adam Watkins to eliminate the pain of maintaining scrapers at scale, Reworkd generates tailored Playwright code, manages proxies, and integrates seamlessly via API; no costly outsourcing or endless maintenance required. From real-time dashboards to built-in deduplication and anti-bot measures, the platform ensures clean, reliable data collection. The team invites you to support their Product Hunt launch and share Reworkd with anyone facing scraping struggles.
Support the Reworkd launch on Product Hunt.
Tempo V2 Ships React Apps at Warp Speed with AI
Tempo (YC S23) just launched V2, taking its visual IDE for React to a new level by bridging the gap between designers and developers. Co-founders Kevin Michael and Peter Gokhshteyn are behind this upgrade, bringing advanced AI-powered features like pixel-perfect design control, a slick Figma-to-code plugin, and smart debugging with Gemini Search. Teams can now rapidly ship production-grade apps using pre-built SaaS templates and Expo support for React Native. Tempo eliminates tedious handoffs, offering a collaborative workflow for developers and designers alike.
Explore Tempo V2 and boost your workflow.
OpenAI Unveils Responses API to Simplify Agent Development
OpenAI has rolled out its new Responses API and Agents SDK, designed to streamline the creation of intelligent agent applications. Recognising the complexity developers face in integrating multiple APIs, the Responses API offers built-in tools like web search, file search, and automated computer interactions without the usual headaches. With features like inline citations, integrated observability, and effortless orchestration, teams can build reliable agents faster than ever. It’s already powering impressive workflows at companies like Coinbase and Box, demonstrating real-world efficiency.
Discover the new Responses API in action.
Sweep Supercharges JetBrains IDEs with Custom AI Assistant
Sweep just dropped a self-hostable AI coding assistant designed specifically for JetBrains users who want powerful AI without leaving their favourite IDE behind. Co-founded by William Zeng and Yu Hai Lu, Sweep addresses frustrations around limited AI support in JetBrains environments. Their self-hosted plugin seamlessly integrates AI, keeping code and data secure on-prem. Sweep offers developers automated context awareness and effortless integration of AI-generated suggestions directly within JetBrains IDEs—finally bridging the gap users have long complained about.
Tinybird Forward Flies Higher with AI-Powered Developer Workflows
Tinybird just launched ‘Forward’, a major evolution of its real-time data platform, offering developers a local-first, friction-free approach to building and shipping real-time apps. Founded by Jorge Gomez Sancha, Raul Ochoa, and Javi Santana, Tinybird has already won over teams at companies like Vercel, Canva, and FanDuel. With Forward, they’ve made real-time data even more accessible, enabling AI-assisted project creation, instant schema migrations, and seamless deployments—all from the comfort of your terminal. No cloud delays, complex pipelines, or tedious setups needed. It’s designed specifically for an AI-native future, letting developers build rapidly and reliably at any scale.
Read more about how Tinybird Forward transforms real-time data.
Acquisitions and Partnerships
EngFlow Acquires tipi.build to Give C and C++ Developers Next-Level Build Speeds
EngFlow, the Bazel-powered build acceleration leader founded by Helen Altshuler and Ulf Adams has acquired tipi.build, deepening their collaboration to streamline build systems for C and C++ developers. The acquisition expands EngFlow’s capabilities, introducing CMake RE, a remote execution service that slashes build times dramatically by distributing tasks across scalable cloud infrastructure. Damien Buhl, co-founder of tipi.build, said:
“Teaming up with the incredible individuals at EngFlow allows us to execute on our mission at the largest scale.”
Explore the full announcement here.
ClickHouse Acquires HyperDX, Accelerating Open-Source Observability for Developers
ClickHouse, the analytical database powering observability at Netflix, Cloudflare, and eBay, has acquired HyperDX, the open-source observability startup founded by Michael Shi and Warren Lee. This acquisition merges HyperDX’s developer-first, OpenTelemetry-native platform – which seamlessly integrates logs, metrics, traces, and session replays – with ClickHouse’s unparalleled scalability and speed. Developers can now diagnose and resolve issues faster, with an observability solution combining ClickHouse’s scale and HyperDX’s ease-of-use.
Find out more about the acquisition here.
DevTools of the Week
Browser Use Hits Viral Momentum as Web Agents Take Off
Browser Use is our DevTool of the Week, making a splash after its starring role in Manus, the viral AI-agent platform that’s got everyone talking.
Founded in 2023 by Gregor Žunič and Magnus Müller out of ETH Zurich’s Student Project House accelerator, Browser Use solves the deceptively complex problem of helping AI smoothly interact with websites. From handling tabs and mouse inputs to logging in, navigating CAPTCHAs, and automating tasks, it streamlines LLM-driven browsing, something previously fraught with headaches.
Since their launch, things have rapidly picked up pace. Zunic to TechCrunch (see article here):
“The past few days have been really wild….We are the biggest trending repository [on GitHub], got loads of downloads [and] all that actually converts to big usage numbers.”
Daily downloads skyrocketed from around 5,000 to 28,000 within a week, driven by their pivotal role in Manus’s viral AI agent (and that being mentioned on X). Now, Browser Use is doubling down as the go-to foundation for developers building the next generation of web agents, or as Zunic puts it, they’re “selling shovels” in this new AI gold rush.
We love seeing Browser Use thriving, topping GitHub trends, and helping developers tackle the messy reality of web automation. See what all the excitement is about on their GitHub page or give it a spin at cloud.browser-use.com.
It’s always great seeing tools like these get the recognition they deserve; real solutions crafted by developers, for developers. From Browser Use’s viral surge to strategic moves reshaping build speeds and observability, developer tools keep stepping up to ease your daily frustrations.
And as always, if you’re thinking about your next role, devtoolsjobs.com is your place to be.
Have a brilliant week!
Louise Ogilvy (Recruitment Director)
Becca Combe MIRP CertRP (Lead Recruiter)
Ben Chipchase (Lead Recruiter)
Natalie Harper (Administrator)
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