Poolside
Coding-model lab whose $14B Texas data center bet just collapsed
Overview
Poolside (founded 2023 by ex-GitHub CTO Jason Warner and Eiso Kant) builds foundation models for agentic coding, deployed inside customer AWS environments. Current models are Laguna M.1/XS.2, replacing Malibu/Point; its $14B Texas data center lost anchor tenant CoreWeave in April 2026.
What you can produce with Poolside
- Laguna M.1 and Laguna XS.2 foundation models for agentic coding
- Sandbox execution and validation for agent-generated code
- Version-control-integrated checkpoints for agent work
- In-VPC/private deployment via Amazon Bedrock and EC2
- Fine-tuning on proprietary customer codebases
ASEAN Perspective
Poolside in Southeast Asia
ASEAN-region availability and pricing notes coming soon. Drop the editorial team a note via /contact/ if you can supply local context (Singapore/Malaysia/Indonesia/Thailand/Vietnam).
Poolside's premise — a coding model trained with reinforcement learning from actual code execution, deployed inside your own AWS environment rather than through a third-party API — is still one of the more credible infrastructure-grade pitches in agentic coding. Laguna XS.2 shipped as a free, open model for local agentic coding, a notable move for a company that has otherwise been enterprise-only.
But 2026 has been rough: CoreWeave walked away from its 15-GW anchor lease and an associated ~$2B funding round on Poolside's Project Horizon data center in April, forcing a scaled-down pivot to hyperscaler partners. Reported ARR is under $50 million against a peak valuation near $12 billion. There's no self-serve individual-developer plan — this is a quote-based enterprise sale, best suited to large orgs that want a fine-tunable model in their own cloud, not solo developers comparison-shopping IDE assistants.
What people say
Poolside doesn't show up on the usual self-serve review platforms (G2, Capterra) because it isn't a self-serve product — deployment goes through enterprise sales, AWS Bedrock, or direct API contracts, and reviewers who'd normally leave star ratings simply aren't the buyer. Slashdot's listing exists but carries essentially no user review volume as of mid-2026.
The more useful signal in 2026 is financial and infrastructure press coverage, and it's turned notably more skeptical than the 2024-2025 narrative. Poolside's Project Horizon — an 8-phase, 2-gigawatt data center on a 568-acre Texas site, unveiled October 2025 with CoreWeave as anchor tenant on a 15-year lease and a contract for 40,000+ Nvidia GB300 systems — fell apart in April 2026 when CoreWeave exited, citing its own $8.5B loan facility as reason to shift toward more flexible multi-partner leasing. The Financial Times and DataCenterDynamics both reported Poolside scrambling afterward to court Google and other hyperscalers for a scaled-back ~400MW version of the same project. A rumored $1B Nvidia anchor investment tied to the original deal reportedly did not close on schedule either.
On the model side, Poolside rebranded its lineup mid-2026: Malibu (the model referenced in most 2025-era coverage) is now legacy, with Laguna M.1 and the smaller, free Laguna XS.2 as the current generation, benchmarked by Poolside itself as improved over Malibu 2.2 on agentic coding and tool-use tasks. Independent third-party benchmark verification of those claims is thin. Company messaging still leans on the AWS Bedrock partnership (announced December 2024) and Amazon EC2 deployment as the core enterprise value proposition — code executed and validated in sandboxes, with checkpoints layered on existing git workflows — but the infrastructure setbacks are the story dominating 2026 coverage more than product reviews.
For a buyer, the practical read is: the model technology and AWS-native deployment story remain credible on paper, but the Project Horizon collapse raises real questions about execution and cash runway that weren't part of the conversation a year ago. Reported cash runway through Q4 2026 without new funding, alongside a hiring and infrastructure-spend freeze, suggests the company is managing a genuine capital crunch rather than just a headline-grabbing delay.
Summary of public user & expert reviews, compiled by RECATOOLS.
About this listing
This entry was compiled from publicly available data including Poolside's official website, press releases, documentation, and reputable third-party publications. RECATOOLS is not affiliated with Poolside unless explicitly stated.
Third-party AI tools update their pricing, features, availability, and policies frequently. Information here may be outdated by the time you read this — we make reasonable efforts to keep listings current, but cannot guarantee absolute accuracy.
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