Niteshift, an AI coding agent startup founded by Datadog veterans, has closed a $7 million seed round backed by a notable angel investor group. The company's core thesis is that enterprises will increasingly resist being locked into a single AI model provider as coding tools mature. Positioned as a model-agnostic alternative, Niteshift aims to give companies more control over their AI development infrastructure.
Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman reportedly criticized Anthropic’s models as unacceptably expensive, highlighting rising enterprise AI costs. The article frames this as part of a broader “AI tax” problem, with companies reassessing ROI as vendor pricing pressure grows. Microsoft’s MAI models are presented as a potential internal alternative to reduce reliance on costly external providers.