Acquisition
Mar 2026Helicone announced it had been acquired by Mintlify; the company said Helicone would continue in maintenance mode with ongoing security updates, bug fixes, and new models.
SourceCompany research
Public company, workplace, funding, and market signals
Updated Jul 30, 2026
Overview
Helicone is an open-source AI Gateway and LLM observability platform for developers that helps teams route, debug, monitor, and analyze production AI applications; it was founded in 2023 and was acquired by Mintlify in March 2026.
Primary product
AI Gateway and LLM observability platform
Founded
2023
Headquarters
San Francisco, California, United States
Team size
1-10 employees
Industry
Software Development
Sub-industry
AI infrastructure / LLM observability
Offices
San Francisco, California, United States
Business model
subscription SaaS
usage-based billing
enterprise sales
open-source/self-hosted
pass-through billing / credits
Funding
People & investors
Work & culture
Founder-led, small, tight-knit, and agile; collaboration, creativity, and developer empowerment are recurring themes, with a strong open-source and high-ownership startup culture.
Visa sponsorship
Limited
Compensation
Public job postings advertised roughly $100K-$150K for software engineer roles and $130K-$200K for founding engineer roles, plus about 0.10%-2.00% equity. Public benefits signals included comprehensive health benefits, meaningful equity, flexible work hours, and remote work options.
Benefits
Comprehensive health benefits
Meaningful equity
Flexible work hours
Remote work options
Hackathons and collaborative environment
Open-source/community-oriented team
Product & market
Pricing
Tiered subscription pricing with a free trial, usage-based/pass-through billing, and enterprise custom pricing for on-prem, SSO, SLAs, and compliance needs.
Differentiators
- —Open-source and self-hostable
- —Combines AI Gateway and full observability in one platform
- —0% markup pass-through billing
- —Supports 100+ models and multi-provider routing
- —Automatic failover, caching, and rate limiting
- —OpenAI SDK-compatible integration
- —Enterprise options such as SOC 2, HIPAA, SAML SSO, and on-prem
- —Rust-based high-performance gateway
Technology
Rust
TypeScript
Next.js
Python
Cloudflare Workers
Express
Tsoa
Supabase
ClickHouse
MinIO
Redis
Docker
Kubernetes
AWS
Datadog
Vercel
Terraform
Helm
PostHog
OpenAI
Customers
Mintlify
Brand.dev
Sunrun
Customer support teams
Education teams
Automotive teams
Tech teams
Civic technology teams
Healthcare teams
Digital marketing teams
Open-source developers
Competitors
OpenRouter
LangSmith
Langfuse
Scale & contact
Estimated revenue
$1M-$10M
Estimated monthly visits
109.8K
Traffic estimate as of Jul 2026
Signals & risks
Latest news
Helicone blog · Mar 2026
Helicone announced it had been acquired by Mintlify and said the product would continue in maintenance mode with security updates, bug fixes, and new models.
Mintlify blog · Mar 2026
Mintlify confirmed the acquisition and said Helicone's founders and team were joining Mintlify in San Francisco.
Helicone blog · Jun 2025
Helicone announced the AI Gateway beta, an open-source Rust router for 100+ models with failovers, caching, and rate limiting.
Helicone changelog · Jun 2025
Helicone announced the AI Gateway launch as a high-performance open-source proxy with smart load balancing, semantic caching, automatic failover, and rate limiting.
Product Hunt · Jul 2024
Product Hunt listing for Helicone as an open-source platform for logging, monitoring, and debugging AI applications.
Jobs and careers at Helicone
0 jobs at Helicone
No open positions
Check back later for new openings