JetBrains Launches Proprietary AI Model to Enhance Developer Tools

• By John K. Waters
• October 23, 2024

Software development tools maker JetBrains has unveiled Mellum, a specialized large language model designed specifically to assist software developers, and in the company's words, "revolutionize code completion in software development."

"Unlike typical large language models, Mellum is built specifically for coding," Valerie Kuzmina said in a blog post. "We are focused on creating a smaller, optimized model that significantly reduces latency, offering developers suggestions almost instantly. This makes Mellum more efficient than many of the third-party models currently available on the market."

The new AI model, available only with the JetBrains AI Assistant, currently supports five major programming languages—Java, Kotlin, Python, Go, and PHP—with additional language support in early access.

Unlike conventional large language models, Mellum's streamlined architecture enables near-instantaneous code suggestions, Kuzmina explained. Early performance metrics show significant improvements over the company's previous AI assistant that relied on third-party models, including a threefold reduction in completion latency and a 40% acceptance rate for suggested code completions.

"To achieve truly powerful code completion, we needed to augment the Assistant with our own model," said Vladislav Tankov, Director of AI at JetBrains, in a statement. "The synergy between client-side integration and server-side logic is crucial for providing fast, accurate, and context-aware suggestions."

The company reports that the new system has more than doubled the total number of shown completions while reducing the cancel rate by three to four times compared to its predecessor.

"Mellum’s power isn’t just in its speed and accuracy; it also benefits from deep integration with JetBrains IDEs," Kuzmina said. "This synergy between the client-side IDE and server-side AI logic allows Mellum to deliver contextually aware code suggestions that are tailored to each project’s needs."

Mellum's training utilizes only publicly available permissively licensed code and does not store or use customer inputs, the company says.

Prague-based JetBrains makes a lineup of more than 30 intelligent software development tools, including the popular IntelliJ IDEA IDE for Java developers and PyCharm for Python devs. The company is also the creator of Kotlin, a popular cross-platform, statically typed, general-purpose high-level programming language with type inference. The company's tools are used by more than 11.4 million professionals and 88 of the Fortune Global Top 100 companies.