This Y Combinator startup just raised $13.5 million to stop developers from tokenmaxxing
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This Y Combinator startup just raised $13.5 million to stop developers from tokenmaxxing
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Weave's cofounders Andrew Churchill (left) and Adam Cohen (center). Weave
2026-07-28T12:11:55.757Z
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A startup that has developed software to track whether AI coding tools are actually making developers more productive has raised $13.5 million.
San Francisco-based Weave builds tools that measure the work of human engineers and AI coding tools, then consolidates it into an output score to help business leaders assess the return on every dollar spent on AI.
"Sales gets judged on one hard number, revenue, while engineering, the most analytical discipline in the company, gets evaluated on vibes," Adam Cohen, Weave's cofounder and CEO, told Business Insider."We wanted to bring that same quantitative rigor to engineering, so we built that measurement layer first, and it became the company."
The startup said that legacy metrics like lines of code produced were built for human output, not AI, which leads to rewarding quantity rather than quality, or "artificial bloat." Cohen said that having a measurement for AI activity cuts the incentive to tokenmax — the practice of treating high-volume AI use as a gauge of productivity.
Earlier this year, many companies encouraged tokenmaxxing through gamified leaderboards and other incentives, before reining in AI spending and focusing on a return on investment.
Companies like Weave, getDX, Jellyfish, LinearB, and OpenRouter are offering services to help companies reduce their AI spending.
Weave went through Y Combinator's Winter 2025 batch and launched officially in February last year. The startup said it is measuring the output of 20,000 engineers at over 500 companies, including Robinhood, Reducto, and PostHog.
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Weave's $13.5 million Series A was led by Standard Capital with participation from Y Combinator, Moonfire, Burst Capital, IrregEx, and the Agent Fund. It previously raised $4.2 million in July 2025.
"AI spend is the most powerful force in the world, and right now there is not an easy way to measure it," said Dalton Caldwell, general partner at Standard Capital.
Weave operates on a software-as-a-service business model. It is priced at $50 per engineer a month, with enterprise pricing available as head count scales.
The 16-person team plans to use the cash injection to advance product development and its go-to-market efforts.
"Every engineering and finance leader is now asking the same question: 'What is our AI spend actually returning?'" Cohen said. "Weave gives leaders one objective measure of real output, human and AI, so they can finally manage engineering like every other part of the business."
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Shuby is a senior reporter at Business Insider's Singapore bureau, where she writes about tech, with a focus on AI training and vibe-coding startups.She previously interned for Bloomberg News and CNBC. She studied communications and business at the National University of Singapore.Have a tip? Contact her via email at sgoel@insider.com or on Signal at @shuby.85.Selected stories:TechThe quiet, galactic ambitions of Cursor CEO Michael TruellInside the lucrative, surreal, and disturbing world of AI trainersContractors who worked on OpenAI projects say Handshake AI is withholding thousands of dollars in payInside the shadow market for AI training accountsContractors training Meta's AI say they read intimate talks with its chatbot — and see data that identifies usersSoutheast Asia's tech startups are chasing the American dreamFeaturesThe 'no one to go with' economyThe lonely march to early retirementShe grew up in Ukraine, studied accounting, and joined the army. But since Russia invaded, she's made a hard career pivot — twiceSome Techies are leaving cushy Silicon Valley jobs to launch startups at home in India