GitHub CEO Bets On India To Be 'World's Largest Developer Community' By 2026 After Free Co-pilot Version

Code hosting platform GitHub's Chief Executive Officer Thomas Dohmke on Thursday said India could become the largest developer community in the world by 2026, surpassing the United States.

Dohmke's comments come after the Copilot-powered developer platform launched a free version of its AI-powered tool, GitHub Copilot, in Visual Studio Code (VS Code).

"Today's announcement is particularly monumental for India. With GitHub Copilot Free, India can accelerate the timeline forward to becoming the world's largest developer community. But only if we make it happen," Dohmke said in a post on X.

He noted that this can be done as early as 2026 if India 'wants'.

"Screw it, I'll stand on a limb. With Copilot Free and sustained public/private outreach, India could accelerate the timeline and surpass the US as soon as 2026 to become the world's largest dev community. India just has to want it," the GitHub CEO said.

The announcement of launching Copilot Free comes after GitHub crossed 150 million users on its platform, up from 100 million in the early months of 2023. This free version will ship by default with Microsoft’s popular VS Code editor. Earlier, users had to pay at least $10 per month, while verified teachers, students and open-source maintainers got free access to the premium version. They will continue to receive the benefits.

Users can now get up to 2,000 code completions and 50 chat messages per month with Copilot Free when they sign in with a personal GitHub account.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also announced the development in a post on X, calling it a "game changer".

He said that developers can now choose between Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet and OpenAI’s GPT-4o models to get their tasks done.

Nadella mentioned that with with Copilot free, users could explain chat to explain code in entirely natural language and build multiple models selecting the most suitable one as per their requirements. 

"You can render edits across your file with multi-file edits. You can access Copilot's third-party ecosystem of agents. And of course, you can generate code completions the core function that started the entire Copilot platform shift," he added. 

“Our ambition is to enable one billion developers on GitHub and this is more possible than ever through the power of AI, the Microsoft CEO concluded.  

Thomas Dohmke, on the other hand, said in a blog, “You can ask a coding question, explain existing code, or have it find a bug. You can execute edits across multiple files. And you can access Copilot’s third-party agents or build your own extension.”

In October, the GitHub CEO praised India for being the “fastest-growing developer population”.

“Of course, I have to show some love to India. Now the fastest growing developer population on the planet, India's rise as a global tech titan is inexorable,” he wrote on X.