The New Stack
AI / developer infrastructure
The dedicated developer-tooling publication. Reaches the practitioner audience: backend engineers, platform leads, and devops folks who compare tools and write rollout playbooks.
Marketing Agency for AI Developer Tool Companies
Reach the developers, engineering leaders, and creators who decide which AI dev tools actually get adopted.
AI developer tools live or die in async surfaces: Hacker News, technical podcasts, YouTube walkthroughs, engineering newsletters. We help you show up credibly in the surfaces that matter most for each moment.
The State of AI Developer Tools Marketing
Why marketing for AI developer tool companies is its own discipline
AI developer tools may be the single most crowded sub-market in AI right now. Coding agents, IDE plugins, eval harnesses, observability tools, prompt platforms, codegen libraries, retrieval frameworks, MCP servers, sandboxing layers. Every week brings another launch and another "yet another version of X." Differentiation in copy is no longer enough.
Marketing a dev tools company in 2026 means showing up credibly across every surface developers actually use to discover and evaluate tools. That is podcasts, YouTube walkthroughs, engineering newsletters, X threads with real benchmarks, conference stages, and tier-1 press for the moments that warrant it. Engaging the right ones, sometimes all at once for a major launch and sometimes just the surface that fits the moment, is most of the job.
What Most Agencies Miss
Four challenges unique to AI Developer Tools
These are the issues that come up every time we plan a campaign in this vertical, regardless of company stage.
01
Discovery is fully async
Almost no developer takes a sales call before they have already evaluated your tool, read at least one third-party review, and skimmed the docs. Your job is to be present and credible in every one of those surfaces before the buyer ever fills out a form.
02
The buyer is the user
In most categories the buyer and the user are different people. In dev tools they are the same person until you reach larger enterprise. That collapses the buying journey and raises the bar on real product quality, but also means your marketing is talking directly to the person who uses the tool every day.
03
A saturated category rewards proof, not pitches
There are 40 companies pitching variants of the same thing this quarter. Capability descriptions on landing pages all start to read the same. The companies that break through pair their narrative with credible third-party evidence: a respected creator using the tool on real work, a benchmark on a public dataset, a customer story with named teams.
04
Earned media compounds harder than paid in this audience
Developers route around ads. They also forward podcast clips, retweet benchmark threads, and share newsletter sponsorships from voices they already trust. The right earned-media moment can drive more pipeline than a quarter of paid acquisition spend in this category.
Who Actually Buys
The AI developer tool buyer profile
Who signs the check, who has veto power, what they care about, and what kills the deal.
Decision maker
The person who signs off
At small teams, the developer or technical founder who will use the tool day-to-day. As companies scale, it shifts to a VP of Engineering, head of platform, or head of dev productivity. At enterprise, a director of platform or DevX leader signs off, usually with a security or procurement co-sign.
Who else gets a vote
Senior engineers who will champion adoption internally, the engineering manager comparing three or four options, security and IT for code-handling and data-residency concerns, and at least one experienced engineer who has watched a previous dev tool fail in production. Their take usually shapes the rollout decision.
What they care about
Performance and latency, accuracy and reliability on their actual stack, integration with the existing toolchain (VSCode, JetBrains, Vim, terminals, CI), pricing transparency, data handling and privacy, model and provider flexibility, and a real path to enterprise (SSO, audit logs, on-prem) when they grow into it.
What kills a deal
Closed-source positioning where competitors are open, no usage-based pricing tier, marketing claims that disagree with how the tool actually behaves on a real codebase, lock-in to a single model provider with no escape hatch, and weak first-week onboarding. Most developers form a verdict on day one.
What We Do
Two channels that move the needle
Run one or both. Every engagement is flexible and month-to-month, no lock-ins, no wasted budget. Click into either service to see exactly how we run it.
Influencer Marketing
Walkthroughs, reviews, and reaction content from technical creators who already reach AI developer tool buyers. We source, brief, contract, and report.
Explore Influencer Marketing
PR & Earned Media
Coverage in TechCrunch, Forbes, Business Insider, VentureBeat, and the niche outlets your AI developer tool buyers read. Funding, launches, thought leadership.
Explore PR
Channel Mix
How we weight channels for AI Developer Tools
Many engagements run just one channel: influencers to amplify a specific launch video, PR for a funding announcement. When an engagement covers both, this is the split we typically use for AI developer tool companies.
Influencer
60%
PR
40%
Influencer
Independent technical creators on YouTube, podcasts, and X are where developers actually decide what to try next. A respected creator using your tool on a real project gives buyers the "I trust how this looks in real hands" moment that converts the rest of the funnel.
PR
Coverage in The Information, TechCrunch, and The New Stack establishes that you are a serious entrant, not just another launch on Hacker News. Funding announcements, customer stories, and category-defining features anchor the broader narrative the rest of the campaign points back to.
Press Targets
Outlets that move the needle for AI Developer Tools
Real publications and the specific beats we pitch into. We do not mass-blast. Every angle is built for a named reporter.
Tier 1 priorities
The Pragmatic Engineer
Engineering practice and tooling decisions
Reaches the engineering leaders who own tooling decisions at scale. A mention here moves enterprise eval cycles and rollout decisions because the audience is the actual buyer.
InfoQ
Software development and architecture
Practitioner-focused publication for senior engineers and architects. Coverage here lands inside engineering organizations during tool selection and influences architectural reviews.
Also placing in
TechCrunch
AI / developer tools
The default outlet for funding rounds, launches, and category-shaping product announcements. Pairs well with a practitioner outlet so the story reaches both founders and the working engineer.
IEEE Spectrum
AI / software systems
Technical credibility with engineers and architects who do not read TechCrunch. Long-form pieces here get forwarded inside engineering orgs for weeks.
ZDNet
Developer / enterprise software
Reaches the broader developer and IT decision-maker audience, especially around enterprise adoption and rollout case studies. Useful for category-level analysis pieces.
Latent Space
AI engineering podcast and newsletter
High-conversion outlet for dev tools whose buyers include senior AI and platform engineers. Trusted in the eval-driven crowd, and a feature here lands directly with the buying audience.
The Register
Tech / developer infrastructure
Independent UK-rooted tech publication with a sharp practitioner readership. Coverage here is irreverent and respected, and it travels well across the European dev community.
Creator Archetypes
Which creators actually move AI developer tool buyers
Each archetype converts a different stage of the buying journey. We build the campaign mix from the ones that fit your stage and ICP.
YouTube
Tried-it-for-a-week YouTuber
Software engineers who run multi-day or multi-week experiments with a new dev tool, document the workflow on camera, and publish honest takes. Audience is engineers actively comparing tools.
How we use them
Long-form sponsorships where the creator uses your tool on real work for a full project arc. Pair the polished walkthrough with a moment where the creator hits a real friction point and works through it on screen. The combination converts.
Podcast
AI engineering podcast hosts
Hosts of weekly or biweekly podcasts on practical AI engineering. They book founders, researchers, and senior engineers shipping production AI infrastructure.
How we use them
Founder or technical co-founder interview as part of a broader narrative arc, often paired with a launch, benchmark release, or eval study. Best when the founder can speak to specific implementation tradeoffs.
X
X benchmark and eval poster
Senior engineers who publish honest comparisons, eval results, and side-by-side runs against your competitors. Smaller follower counts than mainstream AI X but very high signal density.
How we use them
Paid evaluation or "first run" thread tied to a launch or new release. Most effective when the engineer has no existing relationship with you, because their audience treats them as honest brokers.
Engineering leader on LinkedIn
VPs of engineering, heads of platform, and directors of dev productivity who write about tooling decisions, rollout case studies, and team-level adoption. Audience is the buying committee at larger companies.
How we use them
Sponsored case study posts or a paid newsletter feature where the leader walks through an adoption decision. Slower-converting but moves enterprise pipeline more reliably than any other channel for this archetype.
Story Angles That Work
Angles built for this vertical
Story shapes that tend to land in this vertical. Use them as a starting point. Every campaign gets a custom angle built around your actual proof.
Angle 01
Pitched"We benchmarked the top five AI coding tools on our actual production codebase. Here is the methodology, the results, and the one we picked."
Why it works. Reporters and developers in this category are looking for evals on real work, not curated demos. Honest comparisons earn coverage and get shared inside engineering teams.
Angle 02
Pitched"Our tool went from a 12 percent pass rate to 47 percent on a public eval after we rebuilt how it handles tool-call failures. Here is the post-mortem."
Why it works. A specific reliability improvement with a public eval to back it up reads as engineering-grade transparency, which is exactly what this audience rewards with attention.
Angle 03
Pitched"We open-sourced the eval harness or linter or sandbox we use internally to ship updates."
Why it works. Sharing the tooling earns goodwill across the engineering community and gives buyers a low-friction first interaction with your product before any sales conversation.
Angle 04
PitchedFunding round narrative: "Why a dev tooling company chose an infra-focused fund over a generalist AI fund, and what that signals about the road map."
Why it works. Funding stories paired with a category-shaping decision earn deeper coverage than funding alone, and force a reporter to write a real piece instead of a roundup.
Common Pitfalls
Mistakes we watch AI developer tool founders make
Avoid these and you are already ahead of most of the field.
Mistake
Launching with a marketing site that gates the product behind a demo request.
Do this instead
Pair the launch with a real way to try the tool: a free tier, a sandbox, or at minimum a public eval and a video walkthrough on a real workflow. Developers who cannot try it move on.
Mistake
Briefing creators only on a polished product walkthrough.
Do this instead
Pair the walkthrough with a real-use moment: the creator running the tool on their own codebase or workflow, including the friction. The combination converts harder than either alone.
Mistake
Targeting only the developer evaluating the tool, not the engineering leader who signs the renewal.
Do this instead
Run a parallel track for engineering leaders: case studies, LinkedIn voices, and tier-1 press that gives them air cover for the rollout decision. Both audiences need to land at once.
Mistake
Leading press and creator briefs with capability claims alone.
Do this instead
Pair every capability claim with an eval, a methodology, or a real customer story. Reporters and developers both engage more with stories that show the proof, not just the promise.
FAQ
Common questions about marketing for AI developer tool companies
Asked by founders, marketing leads, and operators in this vertical every week.
The buyer is also the user, the category is exceptionally crowded, and discovery happens almost entirely in async surfaces (Hacker News, podcasts, YouTube, newsletters, X). That collapses the buying journey and raises the bar on real product quality, but it also means your marketing speaks directly to the engineer who uses the tool. The campaign mix leans more on creator partnerships and earned media than on paid acquisition.
The Information, TechCrunch, and The New Stack as featured outlets, with VentureBeat, Forbes, IEEE Spectrum, The Pragmatic Engineer, and Latent Space rounding out the standard list. The mix matters more than any single placement. Buyers comparing dev tools tend to read four to six sources before they take a sales call, so we plan coverage as a wave rather than a single hit.
Yes, especially when the creator is a working engineer using your tool on real code on camera. The integrations that move pipeline tend to combine high production quality with authentic moments of real use, including the friction. Polished walkthroughs alone underperform. Polished walkthroughs paired with real-codebase runs perform very well.
A capabilities-only press release will not land in this category. We pair every announcement with a meaningful second narrative: a benchmark, an eval result, a named customer with adoption data, an open-source release, or a category-shaping product decision. The second narrative is what turns a Crunchbase blurb into a feature in a publication that engineers actually read.
First creator integrations typically go live in 3 to 4 weeks. First tier-1 placement usually lands in 30 to 60 days for companies with a launch, customer story, or funding moment to anchor on. Engagements that start with no immediate news beat tend to take 60 to 90 days for the first feature, and we use that runway to build the eval and case study artifacts that earn coverage on a longer arc.
Yes, and this is one of our better-fit profiles. We use the stealth window to build the launch narrative, line up exclusive embargo coverage, brief creators in advance, and prep the proof artifacts (evals, benchmarks, customer stories). Stealth-to-launch is one of the highest-leverage moments for a dev tools company, especially in a category where most launches blur together.
Want a launch plan built specifically for a developer tools company?
Book a free strategy call. We will walk through where you are in the launch arc, the publications and creators we would prioritize for your stage, and how the engagement would look.
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+50
8,250+Media Placements
75M+Influencer Views
750+AI / SaaS Clients