Junie

JetBrains envisions a future where professional software development is transformed into a deeply creative and productive experience, empowering individuals and teams worldwide to innovate without limits. We exist to redefine how developers interact with their tools by embedding intelligence, collaboration, and education into every facet of the development lifecycle.

By crafting advanced integrated development environments and AI-enhanced assistants, JetBrains is shaping a new era of programming that seamlessly integrates diverse languages, frameworks, and workflows. Our mission drives us to support developers with tools that anticipate needs, foster creativity, and accelerate the delivery of high-quality software.

Rooted in an independent spirit and a commitment to authentic innovation, JetBrains is building a global community united by a passion for technology, learning, and continuous improvement. We are creating the foundational technologies that will enable the next generation of software innovation for decades to come.

We'll be honest—when we first looked at JetBrains, we thought "another IDE company." But after digging deeper, we realized this Czech-born company has quietly become one of the most essential players in software development. Their story isn't flashy, but it's impressive in all the right ways.

The Bootstrap Success Story That Actually Worked

Here's what caught our attention: JetBrains started in 2000 with three Russian engineers in Prague and has never taken a dime of venture capital. They've grown to $400 million in annual revenue purely through subscriptions and organic growth. In today's VC-fueled tech world, that's practically unheard of.

The company bootstrapped their way from IntelliJ IDEA—their Java IDE that launched in 2001—to a comprehensive suite of developer tools used by 98% of Fortune 100 companies. That's not luck; that's execution.

Why Developers Actually Love Them

We've seen plenty of developer tools that promise productivity gains, but JetBrains delivers something different: tools that developers genuinely want to use. Their IDEs like PyCharm, WebStorm, and PhpStorm aren't just functional—they're genuinely thoughtful.

What impressed us most was their approach to AI. Instead of slapping ChatGPT into everything and calling it innovative, they built JetBrains AI Assistant with models from OpenAI, Google, and their own proprietary tech. It feels integrated, not tacked on.

The Kotlin Masterclass

Here's where JetBrains showed real strategic thinking: they created Kotlin, a programming language that Google adopted as the preferred language for Android development. Think about that—they built a programming language that's now used by millions of developers worldwide. That's not just smart product development; that's ecosystem creation.

The fact that Kotlin emerged from their team shows they understand developers at a fundamental level. They didn't just make tools for existing languages; they made a better language.

Who Should Pay Attention

If you're a professional developer or leading a development team, JetBrains deserves serious consideration. Their tools aren't cheap, but they're the kind of investment that pays for itself in productivity gains. We're talking about companies with 11 million recurring users who keep renewing their subscriptions.

For startups and enterprises alike, the consistency across their tool suite means less context switching and more focus on actual coding. That's valuable whether you're a solo developer or managing a team of 50.