The 50 Developer Tools companies that produced the most founders (2026)

A founder factory is a company whose people leave to start companies of their own. This ranks every company in the graph by how many of its alumni — people who founded it or worked there — went on to found at least one company, counting only ventures started no earlier than the company itself.

Refreshed 2026-09-13 · updates nightly
Founder factories · Developer ToolsAlumni who went on to found companiesPalantir Technologies: 5 alumni founded 21 companiesPalantir Technologies5MongoDB: 5 alumni founded 6 companiesMongoDB5Docker: 4 alumni founded 5 companiesDocker4Cloudflare: 4 alumni founded 3 companiesCloudflare4Weaveworks: 4 alumni founded 3 companiesWeaveworks4Cursor: 4 alumni founded 2 companiesCursor4Athina AI: 3 alumni founded 4 companiesAthina AI3GitHub: 3 alumni founded 3 companiesGitHub3GitLab: 3 alumni founded 3 companiesGitLab3Loudcloud: 3 alumni founded 3 companiesLoudcloud3Baseten: 3 alumni founded 2 companiesBaseten3DeepCode: 3 alumni founded 2 companiesDeepCode3Graphite: 3 alumni founded 2 companiesGraphite3Neon: 3 alumni founded 2 companiesNeon3Neon: 3 alumni founded 2 companiesNeon3
# Company SectorHQFounded Founders Companies started
1 Palantir Technologies Developer Tools United States 2003 5 21
2 MongoDB Developer Tools New York City, USA 2007 5 6
3 Docker Developer Tools Palo Alto, USA 2010 4 5
4 Cloudflare Developer Tools San Francisco, USA 2009 4 3
5 Weaveworks Developer Tools London, United Kingdom 2014 4 3
6 Cursor Developer Tools San Francisco, USA 2022 4 2
7 Athina AI Developer Tools 3 4
8 GitHub Developer Tools San Francisco, USA 2008 3 3
9 GitLab Developer Tools San Francisco, USA 2011 3 3
10 Loudcloud Developer Tools Sunnyvale, USA 1999 3 3
11 Baseten Developer Tools 3 2
12 DeepCode Developer Tools 3 2
13 Graphite Developer Tools 3 2
14 Neon Developer Tools 3 2
15 Neon Developer Tools 3 2
16 Grafana Labs Developer Tools New York City, USA 2014 3 1
17 Hansoft Developer Tools 3 1
18 OpenHands Developer Tools 3 1
19 OpenHands AI Developer Tools 3 1
20 Releasehub Developer Tools San Francisco, USA 2019 3 1
21 Tailscale Developer Tools Toronto, Canada 2019 3 1
22 Mixer Labs Developer Tools San Francisco, USA 2008 2 5
23 Split Developer Tools United States 2 5
24 Portkey Developer Tools 2 4
25 Ximian Developer Tools Boston, USA 1999 2 4
26 Atlassian Developer Tools Sydney, Australia 2002 2 3
27 Catena Developer Tools United States 2 3
28 Gradient Developer Tools 2 3
29 Stack Overflow Developer Tools 2008 2 3
30 Heptio Developer Tools United States 2 2
31 Lob Developer Tools San Francisco, USA 2013 2 2
32 Railway Developer Tools San Francisco, USA 2020 2 2
33 Sentient Developer Tools 2 2
34 Serverless Stack Developer Tools San Francisco, USA 2017 2 2
35 Twilio Developer Tools San Francisco, USA 2008 2 2
36 Webflow Developer Tools San Francisco, USA 2013 2 2
37 Agency AI Developer Tools 2 1
38 AgentOps Developer Tools 2 1
39 Bucket Developer Tools 2 1
40 CodiumAI Developer Tools 2 1
41 Hasura Developer Tools San Francisco, USA 2017 2 1
42 LaunchDarkly Developer Tools Oakland, USA 2014 2 1
43 Magnific AI Developer Tools 2 1
44 Obvious (fka Flatfile) Developer Tools 2 1
45 Opbeat Developer Tools 2 1
46 Redalyc Developer Tools Mexico 2002 2 1
47 Replit Developer Tools San Francisco, USA 2016 2 1
48 StackBlitz Developer Tools 2 1
49 Starburst Developer Tools Boston, USA 2017 2 1
50 Tempo Labs Developer Tools 2 1
How this is counted. A person counts as an alumnus of a company if they founded it or worked there. They count towards the company’s score if they went on to found at least one other company that was started no earlier than the company itself. Universities and other non-commercial organisations are pruned from the graph where we can identify them. Data is community-corrected — fix something.