Meta takes in young startup Conductor, whose cloud version of its agent software disappears on 20 November
The US group is buying a startup that lets several coding agents work side by side, while OpenAI picks up a developer tool the same week.
Meta has acquired Conductor, a startup founded in 2024 that makes software for running several AI agents on a programming project at once. The Mac app puts each agent in an isolated copy of a Git project, so developers can have parts of a project worked out in parallel. The agents themselves come from other labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic, TechCrunch writes. Founder and chief executive Charlie Holtz announced the acquisition on his blog on Wednesday. Meta confirmed the deal but gave no price.
For customers the takeover has quick consequences. The hosted Conductor Cloud service becomes read-only from 13 November and closes on 20 November, after which users' cloud data will be deleted, The Register reports. The app will keep working for a few months but will receive no new models or critical bug fixes from early 2027. Holtz promises something new by early next year.
Meta already launched its own coding agent, Muse Code, in August and says its Muse agents now have more than 10 million users, according to TechCrunch. The Register says the company has held back on large purchases since April, when China blocked a 2 billion dollar bid for Manus AI. Meanwhile the big AI players are busily buying software development tools: OpenAI announced on Wednesday that it plans to acquire Pierre Computer.