Entire CEO Thomas Dohmke, speaking last month at Madrona’s IA40 Summit in Seattle, says AI agents have made code review a much bigger bottleneck for developers. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
A startup led by former GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke is introducing its own platform for storing, reviewing and shipping code written by AI agents, competing with the company he used to run.
The startup, Entire, on Monday unveiled what it calls a Git forge — a service for hosting code, reviewing changes and running builds, the core of what GitHub does — designed for teams whose AI agents write code faster than people can review it. The company is pitching it as an alternative to GitHub.
The news comes two days before GitHub’s annual Universe conference in San Francisco. Microsoft acquired GitHub for $7.5 billion in 2018 and has since folded it into its CoreAI division.
The biggest change is Trails, Entire’s replacement for the pull request, the standard way developers propose and review code changes. The pull request “has become an audit log that only the agent reads,” Dohmke wrote in a blog post Monday. Instead of reading through every changed line, developers see a dashboard of scores from AI agents evaluating the code on each update.
According to Entire, multiple AI agents check the quality of each change, so developers can merge code without reading every line. Teams can also require a person’s sign-off, or passing automated tests, before any code goes in, the company said.
The launch comes as GitHub strains under the load from AI agents. The platform has had several significant outages in recent months, including one in August that lasted nearly eight hours. GitHub is moving from its own data centers to Microsoft’s Azure cloud to add capacity. GitHub said developers and agents made 7.38 billion commits, or saved code changes, on the platform in September alone.
Dohmke, who is based in Bellevue, Wash., left GitHub last year after nearly four years as CEO. Entire says it now has 50 employees. The company is fully remote.
Entire isn’t alone in rethinking code hosting for AI agents. AI coding company Cursor launched its own code-hosting service, Origin, in August. And Anthropic recently described building its own source control system as the number of code changes it merged each day grew from about 2,500 in May to more than 30,000 in September.
With the latest updates, Entire now lets developers host private code repositories directly on its service in the U.S., Europe, India and Australia, and says its service can handle up to 89 times as many code pushes per second as GitHub, based on its own benchmarks. It’s partnering with Buildkite and Depot on build and test pipelines, giving developers a way to move off GitHub Actions. Public repositories and self-hosting are on the roadmap.
Entire is also adding what it calls Continuous Memory, which lets AI agents search past coding sessions for the context behind earlier changes. The company says one part of it, a map of the codebase, cut token use by up to 71% in its testing.
That goes beyond the startup’s July launch, which mirrored existing GitHub repositories on a faster network rather than replacing them. Developers can still mirror from GitHub, or now move their code to Entire instead.
Microsoft’s venture arm M12 was among the backers of Entire’s $60 million seed round in February. Felicis led the round, with participation from Seattle-based Madrona and Basis Set Ventures, along with individual investors such as Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang and Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan.
“Code review was always a bottleneck,” Dohmke said at a Madrona event last month. “I’ve never worked in a software company where I didn’t wait for somebody else to review my pull request, and you have to ping people in Slack three times. And there was this one guy that had to review everything because he knew what to look for. And now that bottleneck is 10 times bigger.”
The Legislative Building in Olympia, where Washington lawmakers passed a 9.9% tax on household income above $1 million earlier this year. Initiative 645 on the November ballot would repeal it. (Photo by Nils Huenerfuerst via Unsplash)
Editor’s note: GeekWire publishes guest opinions to highlight a range of perspectives on issues shaping the tech and startup community. To submit a guest column, email tips@geekwire.com.
This fall, Washington state voters will once again have to defend their economic future and core competitive edge by voting yes on Initiative 645 to repeal the state income tax.
Earlier this year, state lawmakers established the new state income tax. Supporters claim that this tax will only impact higher-income earners. But the measure includes broad new income taxing powers that make every Washingtonian and those doing business in the state a target.
How do we know this? Legislators have made it clear by their actions — and actions speak louder than words!
Most notably, the income tax was written specifically to cover pensions, reversing Washington’s previous commitment to not tax pension retirement income. While teacher, firefighter and other pensioners are not initially paying the state income tax, the only reason to make their income subject to the tax is to require them to pay when it is lowered to apply to them.
Second, Olympia actually voted twice on the income tax — once to pass the income tax, and a second time to ensure they could expand it to everyone. They wanted to make clear their intent to voters.
Finally, the income tax is already driving people out of the state, which will result in lower tax revenues. We can be confident that Sen. Jamie Pedersen (who has stated publicly that he supports a universal income tax on all Washingtonians) and the Legislature will use that shortfall as justification to apply the tax to many more Washingtonians. So, unless you vote yes on I-645, you can expect to pay the income tax soon.
Even the state’s most prominent Democrats are calling out Olympia’s runaway spending. Former Gov. Christine Gregoire told Washington business leaders recently that Olympia has “a spending problem, not a revenue problem,” noting the state budget has grown from $33 billion to $80 billion since she left office. Former Gov. Gary Locke, similarly, called Olympia’s spending “out of control.”
Two Democratic governors, sounding the same alarm, should tell legislators to focus on spending cuts, not tax increases. But, instead of looking for savings, Washington’s political leaders passed the largest tax and spending increase ($9.3 billion) in state history in 2025, and then followed it up with another $2.3 billion spending increase in 2026.
The pattern is as clear in Washington as it is in other states that are falling behind competitively: no matter how much citizens hand over in taxes, legislators always think it’s never enough. Giving lawmakers even more of our tax dollars when they have failed to responsibly manage what they have hurts everyone in the state.
Beyond the impact to personal paychecks, there are two long-term consequences that will negatively impact voters — whether they pay the tax or not.
First, job creators and job opportunities are leaving the state. National IRS migration data already shows high earners leaving high-tax states at an accelerating rate. Washington ranks sixth highest in the nation for losing higher-income residents, and a state income tax will accelerate this trend. A 2026 Association of Washington Business survey found nearly 1 in 4 Washington employers are now considering relocating out of state, nearly triple the rate from just a year earlier.
Companies such as Starbucks, moving a large share of its corporate workforce to Nashville, are shifting operations and jobs out of the state in response to the increasingly hostile tax climate and the costs of doing business. Sadly, the result is that Washington has an unemployment rate hovering near 5%, tied for sixth highest in the country and nearly a full percentage point above the national average.
Second, avoiding the tax effectively means cutting all ties to Washington. Under the new law, it appears taxpayers can only shed their Washington domicile by spending 30 days or fewer in the state a year and selling their home. It’s no surprise active home listings are up an average 27% in much of Washington this year.
This rule is also an existential threat for the state’s largest nonprofits, as financial advisors are already telling clients the “gold standard” for anyone trying to sever ties is to stop philanthropic giving in Washington entirely.
The last time Washingtonians voted on an income tax was in 2010. That income tax proposal, I-1098, was rejected by a 64%-36% voting margin. Companies including Microsoft, Boeing and Expedia, as well as the founders of Amazon and T-Mobile, supported the effort to stop the income tax. They were right to do so for the benefit of their employees and the citizens of Washington.
In the years since, economic growth and investment enabled the state spending budget to dramatically increase from under $30 billion to more than $80 billion without an income tax. Washington cannot afford to follow the path of states like New York and Oregon, where out-of-control spending leads to higher taxes and an increasingly difficult climate for families and businesses. We need a state that can compete!
This November, voters have the opportunity to send a message to politicians by doing what they have done time and again: vote yes on I-645 to repeal the state income tax and help Washington succeed for generations to come.
A portion of the Yoodli team gathers for a photo this week inside the company’s new headquarters on Seattle’s Pier 70, under a neon version of the startup’s logo. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
Yoodli, the Seattle startup that offers AI to help people practice speeches, sales pitches and job interviews, is expanding to pursue a larger vision: AI that can teach people almost any skill they need on the job, and track whether they’re improving.
The company is recasting itself as the “AI platform for human skills” with the launch of new tools that create courses, teach people to use AI and software, answer employees’ questions, coach them during calls and meetings, and show managers whether the training is paying off.
One of the new tools takes the AI personas that companies build for practice sessions and puts them to work elsewhere. Loaded with a company’s own material, they can answer questions on an intranet, a partner site or a live call, handing off to humans when needed.
The move pushes Yoodli beyond practice sessions and into the much larger business of corporate training, where Workday and Microsoft’s LinkedIn are among the larger companies offering AI tools for training and coaching employees.
It also expands the potential market for the company, which counts Google, Snowflake and Databricks among its customers and has raised nearly $60 million from investors including WestBridge Capital, Neotribe, Madrona and AI House.
Yoodli co-founders Varun Puri, left, and Esha Joshi at the company’s new headquarters on Seattle’s Pier 70. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
Varun Puri, Yoodli’s co-founder and CEO, said the goal is to use AI to help people get better at their jobs, at a time when the technology is more often raising concerns and questions about the future of work.
“This is all about upskilling humans and believing in the human potential,” Puri said in an interview this week at the company’s new headquarters on Seattle’s Pier 70. “How do we help humans be the best versions of themselves and get measurably better?”
Esha Joshi, Yoodli’s co-founder and chief customer officer, said the company is taking its cues from what businesses were already starting to do: using Yoodli to teach employees new skills, beyond the situational AI “roleplays” that have fueled the company’s growth.
Many of Yoodli’s first business customers were tech companies, but the list has since expanded to include the likes of governments, pharmaceutical companies and banks.
“There’s a whole world of people that need to develop their skills,” Joshi said.
How Yoodli got here: GeekWire has followed the company almost from the start. Our first story ran five years ago today, when the startup had just spun out of what was then known as the AI2 Incubator, with an AI tool to help people improve their public speaking.
Puri had run special projects for Google co-founder Sergey Brin and worked at X, the research arm of Google parent Alphabet. Joshi spent more than four years at Apple as a software engineer and product manager, and was Yoodli’s original chief technology officer.
With its transition to AI roleplays about two years ago, Yoodli shifted to selling primarily to companies and other organizations. Google, Snowflake and Databricks use it to train sales teams, Puri said. The government of El Salvador uses it to train doctors on talking with patients, and the University of Washington uses it to prepare students for job interviews, he said.
Yoodli’s new “Create” tool builds a training program from a prompt, asking follow-up questions and drafting personas along the way. (Yoodli Image)
Yoodli reported 900% revenue growth when it announced the December round. Puri declined to disclose current revenue or say whether the company is profitable, but said it isn’t actively raising money. “It’s been a very strong year,” he said.
The startup will face plenty of competition as it expands into the broader market. Tech giants Salesforce and Microsoft, for example, both offer AI roleplay coaching as part of their larger platforms.
Workday last year acquired Sana, an AI startup with a corporate learning platform. Highspot, the Seattle company that merged with rival Seismic in August, offers an AI roleplay tool, and startups including Hyperbound and Second Nature focus on sales roleplay.
Yoodli also integrates with some of them, including Workday and Highspot.
Asked what keeps Yoodli from becoming a feature in a larger company’s product, Puri cited the depth of its software, and pointed out that Google, for example, uses Yoodli to train its own teams on Gemini.
The company today: Yoodli has grown to about 100 employees, up from 25 in May 2025. Recent executive hires include:
Kartik Murthy, vice president of product, previously head of product at cybersecurity company Coalition, and a key figure in the creation of the new tools.
Other executives include Josh Vitello, the chief revenue officer, who joined in April 2025 after more than 15 years at Tableau and Salesforce; and Derek Sessions, the chief technology officer since February 2023, previously an engineering manager at video software company Panopto.
Yoodli’s new offices are on the eastern side of Pier 70, sharing a building with AI House, the incubator and venture capital fund formerly known as the AI2 Incubator. Yoodli began at the incubator when it was across town near the northern shore of Lake Union.
The conference room names reflect the company’s culture. “Speakeasy” was Yoodli’s code name before launch. “PlankoClock” honors a daily ritual: at 3:45, the whole company stops to do planks. “Agnes Potts” is named for one of Yoodli’s earliest AI personas — a “customer” so tough that users wanted T-shirts saying they’d booked a call with her, Puri said.
Yoodli’s “Personas” are AI experts that companies can create and train on their own material. (Yoodli Image)
The new tools: Yoodli describes the expanded platform as five products.
Roleplays: The practice sessions the company is known for, in which an employee rehearses a sales call or other conversation with AI personas. They now teach as well, with an AI tutor that can explain a topic, pull up slides and take questions.
Personas: AI experts that companies build for practice sessions can now also answer questions on an intranet, a partner site or a live call. Yoodli has an AI version of Puri that job candidates can talk with before they interview with the real CEO.
Create: Builds a full training program from a single written request, in minutes instead of weeks, Yoodli says. In a demo, Puri typed a request for a course on Google’s Gemini and got back a multi-step training program.
Coach: A personal coach that works inside apps such as Zoom, Slack and Teams, and learns each employee’s strengths and weak spots. Puri compared it to a friend “kicking you under the table” in a meeting.
Measure: Reports for employees and managers on whether skills are improving, not just whether the training was completed. For sales teams, Puri said, that can mean tying training to deals closed.
Yoodli’s website lists individual plans at $8 and $20 a month, billed annually, with custom pricing for businesses depending on team size and use case.
When GeekWire visited this week, employees took a quick break from preparing for the new platform launch to gather for an impromptu team photo. They goofed around under a Yoodli sign with the type of energy you’d see at a much smaller startup.
As they headed back to their desks, I mentioned that we’d all remember this moment when the company has its IPO in 10 years. They laughed and groaned at the suggestion that it would take that long.
Editor’s note: Yoodli is a client of GeekWire’s GeekWork recruiting business.