Topic
31 facts from 19 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2019
Microsoft's 2019 OpenAI investment and partnership gave GitHub access first to GPT-3 and then to the Codex model, which it used to build the original GitHub Copilot.
“That gave us access to, uh, first GPT 3 and then the Codex model, uh, to to build”
2021
GitHub launched the technical preview of Copilot in June 2021.
“June 2021 is when we launched the preview of Copilot”
2021
Dohmke says Copilot had about a million users on its waitlist within a year of the preview.
“I think we had a million users on the waitlist, um, uh, uh, within less than a year”
2021
Dohmke says GitHub built the ghost text interface for code completion together with the VS Code team for the original Copilot.
“That didn't exist like we built that in partnership with the VS Code team for the original Copilot.”
2022
GitHub Copilot reached general availability in June 2022, before ChatGPT launched.
“what we call GA, general availability, was was June 2022”
2022
CJ Desai says AI coding assistants started with GitHub Copilot in 2022, followed by other tools including Anthropic's.
“2024 and twenty-two started with GitHub co-pilot, then few others, all the way to Anthropic, uh, and so on.”
2023
The first productivity results on these tools came from two controlled experiments, one on business writing and one on coding.
“one is a controlled experiment that was done with people writing business writing, the other was a controlled experiment with coding”
2024
Josh Albrecht praises GitHub Copilot for keeping its suggestions short, which makes them easy to review.
“One thing that I really like about Copilot, uh, just as an example, is that it keeps it short, right? So it's easy to review.”
2025
Dohmke said GitHub Copilot had 15 million users, as reported in Microsoft's earnings the week before the recording.
“Copilot has now 15 million, uh uh, users, uh, and the Copilot code review agent”
2025
Dohmke says GitHub ships a new Copilot code completion model every month, chosen using offline and online tests of how many suggested characters developers accept and keep.
“we are now, uh, shipping a new code completion model, uh, uh, every month”
2025
Microsoft announced in its earnings that GitHub Copilot had 20 million users.
“we just announced in Microsoft earnings that we now have 20 million, uh, users on on GitHub Copilot”
2025
Dohmke says many GitHub Copilot competitors run their model inference on Microsoft Azure.
“where many of those competitors actually run their model inference on Azure”
2025
Dohmke says GitHub believes Copilot's business is bigger than Cursor's.
“given that, you know, we are very open about that, we believe Copilot is, uh, bigger than Cursor”
2025
Sharma cites assigning a pull request to GitHub Copilot and creating an agentic sales development rep as examples of embodied agents already in use.
“You can assign a pull request to Copilot, you can, uh, create a software development rep that's agentic that can kind of do some of the lead generation and mining for you.”
Undated
Kevin Scott said GitHub Copilot was the first copilot Microsoft built, letting developers describe code in natural language.
“the first thing that we built was GitHub Copilot, which is a coding tool.”
Undated
Nadella said his confidence in this generation of AI began when he saw GPT-3 progress to GPT-3.5 and its use in GitHub Copilot.
“my entire confidence in this generation of A I started when I started seeing from G P T three to 3.5 and that implementation in GitHub.”
Undated
Varun Mohan says GitHub Copilot published a post claiming it did not output security vulnerabilities, which Codeium says it could reproduce.
“one of our competitors, obviously the biggest one, Copilot, came out with a post where they were like, Hey, we don't output security vulnerabilities.”
Undated
Mario Rodriguez says GitHub has statistics showing a 55% improvement in productivity with GitHub Copilot.
“And, you know, we have stats like 55% improvement in productivity, and this one I'm really proud of.”
Undated
Mario Rodriguez says GitHub Copilot grew out of a research memo written after GitHub started experimenting with new large language models from OpenAI.
“And we had just started to play with some of the models, some of these new LLM models coming from OpenAI.”
Undated
Aaron Levie says coding assistants like Copilot and Cursor took off because they add productivity to an existing workflow without requiring users to change behavior.
“I would say this largely explains the breakthrough in copilot or cursor I is because I get to do exactly the same thing I'm doing now, but I'm seeing incremental productivity gains right away without changing really any behavior.”
Undated
Sualeh Asif says Cursor co-founders Amon and Arvind were the last to move from Vim to VS Code, triggered by GitHub Copilot.
“Amon and Arvind probably were the last to switch over from from Wim to VS Code. And and the trigger there was was GitHub copilot,”
Undated
Aaron Levie says GitHub Copilot launched about a year or two before ChatGPT, giving developers their breakthrough AI moment 12 to 18 months earlier than consumers.
“GitHub Copilot was introduced about a year or two before ChatGPT, so developers actually had their ChatGPT moment at at least twelve to eighteen months months before everybody had their ChatGPT moment on the consumer side.”
Undated
Aaron Levie says GitHub Copilot was introduced about one to two years before ChatGPT, so developers reached their breakthrough moment with AI earlier than the general public.
“GitHub Copilot was introduced about a year or two before ChatGPT, so developers actually had their ChatGPT moment”
Undated
Josh Weiner says he has been building an AI chess coach using tools such as Cursor and GitHub Copilot.
“I've been in the process of building out an AI chess coach using some of these tools like Cursor or GitHub Copilot and so forth.”
Undated
GitHub's study that found Copilot users 55% faster gave 50 developers a task without Copilot and 50 with it.
“we gave 50 developers, uh, a task, um, to do it without Copilot and 50 with Copilot”
Undated
Dohmke says the original GitHub Copilot ran inference on a large language model at every keystroke, which he called unheard of at the time.
“because on every single keystroke, we're running inference against a large language model”
Undated
Dohmke says the original GitHub Copilot came from a partnership in which OpenAI supplied GPT-3 and the Codex model while Microsoft supplied infrastructure.
“that's how the original Copilot came to be, uh, through a partnership between OpenAI, um, who had developed GPT three, and then the Codex model, Microsoft”
Undated
Microsoft already ran responsible AI systems at scale for GitHub Copilot before ChatGPT's release and adapted them to new risks.
“We had already had, you know, at scale, generative AI, responsible AI systems running in production, for example, for GitHub Copilot, and we had to adapt them to new risk.”
Undated
Nadella said GitHub Copilot subscribers grew from 20 million to 26 million in the most recent quarter.
“I think we grew from 20 to 26 million subs, right? So I feel good about our sub growth”
Undated
Niro Rajadurai says that XBOW's founder, Hugo Demoor, was the person who invented GitHub Copilot.
“the founder of XBOW, Hugo Demoor was actually the person that invented GitHub Copilot.”
Undated
Carrol Chang says candidates in unguided coding tests will likely paste the task into AI tools such as Claude Code, Codex or GitHub Copilot and return the output.
“people are gonna just go and put the prompt into Claude Code or Codex or GitHub Copilot and then take the outputs and and give them back to you”
Episodes