Boxd raises $2M for AI coding agent

Dutch startup Boxd has raised $2 million in a pre-seed funding round. The investment will fund the development of its cloud computing infrastructure tailored for developers and AI coding agents.

BlueYard Capital led the round. It included participation from OVNI Capital, Antler, S20, and Script Capital. Business angels from General Intuition and other technology firms also joined.

Founded by Michiel Voortman, Laurentiu Ciobanu, and Hidde Kehrer, Boxd is building a platform to provide virtual machines. These machines are designed for executing code, running tests, and managing software development workflows. The company specifically targets the infrastructure demands of AI coding agents, which often need dedicated, long-running computing environments to operate in parallel.

The Infrastructure Challenge

Traditional development setups typically use individual virtual machines or containers. Boxd argues these become difficult to manage when developers run multiple AI agents simultaneously. Allowing unsupervised coding agents to operate also introduces security risks.

The company's platform lets teams create numerous cloud machines as needed. It features snapshotting and live-forking capabilities. This allows developers and AI agents to create copies of running machines, including their memory and active connections, in under 100 milliseconds. The goal is to let multiple agents test different solutions in parallel while reducing the configuration and maintenance burden of separate environments.

Security Through Simplified Architecture

Boxd employs a simplified virtualisation architecture. It focuses on CPU, RAM, storage, and networking instead of emulating extra hardware like audio devices, webcams, or USB ports. The company states this reduces the software attack surface. It helps mitigate security risks linked to running autonomous agents.

Co-founder Hidde Kehrer explained the rationale. "Every AI coding agent needs a real computer to run on rather than a disposable sandbox," he said. "Current container alternatives suffer from security vulnerabilities and lose state as soon as processes complete."

Funding and Future Plans

The newly acquired capital will be used to expand Boxd's team. It will also fund further development of its custom virtualisation engine. The company aims to scale its infrastructure to meet the growing needs of developers and AI agents.

The platform's approach is a direct response to the evolving demands of AI-assisted software development. By providing persistent, instantly forkable environments, Boxd seeks to address both management complexity and security concerns inherent in deploying multiple AI coding agents.