swimm Raises $5.7M to Revolutionize Code Documentation

A significant challenge for many software teams is maintaining up-to-date documentation for their code, which can create difficulties when new developers join a project and attempt to understand an existing codebase. Often, even when documentation or inline comments are present, they become outdated and unreliable over time. Swimm, a company that recently secured $5.7 million in seed funding, seeks to address this issue by automating documentation updates following initial creation, ensuring it remains synchronized with code changes.

This funding round was spearheaded by Pitango First, with additional investment from TAU Ventures, Axon Ventures, and FundFire, alongside contributions from several angel investors, including the founder of the developer platform Snyk.

Image Credits: Swimm

While Swimm’s primary marketing emphasizes accelerating team onboarding, it offers benefits to any development group. The platform enables the creation of not only standard, automatically updated documentation, but also interactive walkthroughs and tutorials. Its integrated code browser allows users to quickly locate all documentation associated with a specific file.

A key feature of Swimm is its ability to automatically update code examples within documentation as the codebase evolves—or to notify users when substantial changes necessitate manual review. This functionality aims to minimize discrepancies between the code and its corresponding documentation.

Image Credits: Swimm

The company’s founders—Oren Toledano (CEO), Omer Rosenbaum (CTO), Gilad Navot (chief product officer), and Tom Ahi Dror (chief business officer)—developed this solution based on their experiences running Israel Tech Challenge, a coding bootcamp modeled after the training program utilized by the Israeli Defence Forces’ 8200 Intelligence Unit.

“Through discussions with numerous companies in Israel and the United States, we identified a flawed engineering onboarding process,” Toledano explained. “We frequently encountered the phrase: ‘we throw them in the deep end, and they either sink or swim.’ ” (This sentiment inspired the company’s name, Swimm). He argues that many organizations lack effective methods for training new employees on their codebases, largely due to the absence of comprehensive and current documentation.

“As companies grow larger, knowledge about the codebase becomes more fragmented—and much of this knowledge is lost when developers depart,” he added.

Swimm aims to provide companies with the means to offer new hires access to tutorials grounded in the latest codebase, as well as a smoother transition into working with the production code.

Image Credits: Swimm

Notably, Swimm operates locally on a developer’s machine. This approach enhances security by preventing code from being transmitted to Swimm’s servers. In fact, the Swimm team reports that some of its initial customers are companies specializing in security. This local operation also simplifies the onboarding process for new users.

Toledano indicated that, following a focus on core product development and collaboration with early design partners and customers, the team plans to expand its user base after the product’s beta launch.

“Software development is now central to every modern business. Swimm delivers a structured, contextual, and transparent approach to enhancing developer productivity,” stated Yair Cassuto, a partner at Pitango First who will be joining Swimm‘s board. “Swimm’s solution facilitates rapid and insightful onboarding for any codebase, benefiting the entire developer lifecycle: from initial onboarding to project handoffs, incorporating new open-source tools, and even employee offboarding.”