Finland-based Tangled, the next-generation code collaboration platform, has raised a $4.5 million round led by byFounders, with participation from Bain Capital Crypto and existing investor Antler.
A notable roster of angels joined in, including Thomas Dohmke (former GitHub CEO), Avery Pennarun (CEO of Tailscale), Mårten Mickos (former MySQL and HackerOne CEO) and Finnish investor Sami Honkonen.
The investment will be used to scale the platform into a foundational environment for software collaboration globally.
Removing the bottlenecks in software creation
The surge in machine-assisted programming has contributed to a nearly 50% increase in professional developers over the past three years. Yet contribution, review and collaboration workflows have struggled to keep pace. Most platforms still rely on centralised, legacy systems that limit interoperability, restrict ownership and slow down coordination between humans and automated agents.
Tangled tackles this gap head-on. By building on Bluesky’s AT Protocol, it moves away from siloed, server-locked platforms and instead enables seamless interoperability across an open network. This gives developers more control over their work, preserves their professional graph and unlocks more fluid workflows for both people and automated assistants.
Indian-born founders with European roots
Tangled was founded by brothers Akshay and Anirudh Oppiliappan, both of whom have deep experience building large-scale distributed systems and code intelligence platforms at Y Combinator-backed startups.
Akshay is based in London, while Anirudh operates from Helsinki, a setup that mirrors the company’s cross-Europe identity and its mission to provide the continent with a sovereign alternative to US-controlled developer platforms. Their shared background in scaling infrastructure gives Tangled a technical depth that aligns with its open-network ambitions.
Next-gen platform reimagining code collaboration
At its core, Tangled is a next-generation, social-enabled open-source platform for code collaboration. Designed as an extensible network rather than a centralised host, it offers transparent, API-less interoperability that traditional tools cannot match. Developers retain full ownership of their repositories, contributions, and professional connections.
The platform pairs modern developer tooling with social features that make code review, discovery and reputation more natural. By allowing both human contributors and automated agents to participate directly, Tangled aims to define the next standard for software collaboration.
An alternative to GitHub?
Backed by new capital, the company is positioning itself as Europe’s answer to GitHub, giving developers a transparent, sovereignty-aligned alternative fit for the next era of software creation.
That said, the company will focus on giving the community a choice that prioritises transparency and developer sovereignty.
Anirudh Oppiliappan, co-founder of Tangled, comments, “Tangled is built on the belief that code collaboration should be as open and social as the web itself. We are moving beyond the limitations of centralised silos to give developers a platform where they actually own their data and their social graph. This funding allows us to build the foundational layer for software collaboration where both human developers and autonomous AI agents can participate directly in the network.”
Deina Kellezi, Investor at byFounders, comments, “From the moment we first met the founders, we were extremely impressed by their deep passion, speed of shipping, and vision of wanting to improve how software developers collaborate. In a world where development is being disrupted by AI coding agents and tools, they are building the next generation code forge from first principles, and we couldn’t be more excited to partner up with them on this journey.”
Jussi Kallasvuo, Partner at Antler, comments, “The bottleneck in software development has shifted from writing code to reviewing and managing it at scale. We backed Tangled because the team has the technical depth to build a system that manages this complexity for both humans and AI. This is a critical piece of infrastructure for the European tech ecosystem, providing a native alternative to American legacy platforms.”
