# What is Factory AI? The company behind the Droid coding agent

> Factory AI is a San Francisco company, founded in 2023, that makes the Droid coding agent. Where Droid runs, what Factory costs, and who uses it.

- Tools: Factory
- Author: [Syed Fazle Rahman](https://buildful.ai/authors/fazle)
- Published: 2026-10-25
- Updated: 2026-10-29
- Sources:
  - https://factory.com/company
  - https://factory.com
  - https://factory.com/news/5-billion-valuation
  - https://docs.factory.com/droid-cli/quickstart
  - https://factory.com/pricing
  - https://docs.factory.com/factory-app/overview
  - https://docs.factory.com/ide-integrations
  - https://docs.factory.com/
  - https://docs.factory.com/delegations
  - https://docs.factory.com/droid-exec/overview
  - https://docs.factory.com/droid-computers/overview
  - https://factory.com/news/claude-marketplace
  - https://docs.factory.com/models

---

Factory AI is a San Francisco company that makes Droid, an AI coding agent you can run from a desktop app, a terminal, your editor, the web, or by tagging it in Slack, Linear or Jira. Matan Grinberg and Eno Reyes founded it in 2023. Paid plans start at $20 a month, and its website is now factory.com.

## What is Factory AI?

Factory is an AI software development company. Its product is Droid, an agent that plans, writes, tests and reviews code, and Factory sells it to individual developers, small teams and large engineering organizations. The [company page](https://factory.com/company) gives its mission as "Bring Autonomy to Software Engineering".

Factory [describes what it sells](https://factory.com) as a "[software factory](https://buildful.ai/knowledge-base/what-is-a-software-factory)": one governed system that covers code review, QA, security review, documentation and incident response, with engineers setting the goals and policies. In its [funding announcement](https://factory.com/news/5-billion-valuation), Factory says it moved from individual coding agents to software factories with Factory 2.0 in April 2026, and that customers can run it in the cloud, on their own servers, or in fully air-gapped environments.

## Is it factory.ai or factory.com?

Both addresses reach the same company. factory.ai now sends visitors to factory.com with a permanent redirect, and docs.factory.ai does the same for docs.factory.com. The product itself still lives at app.factory.ai: that's where you sign in, and it's where the Droid CLI installer comes from. People still search for "Factory AI" and "factory.ai", but the company calls itself Factory.

## What are Factory Droids?

Droid is the name of Factory's agent. It runs the same way on every surface, and you can extend it with custom droids, which are subagents with their own instructions, model and tool limits. In Factory's [CLI quickstart](https://docs.factory.com/droid-cli/quickstart), Droid shows you the exact diff and waits for your approval before it edits a file. [Factory Droid](https://buildful.ai/knowledge-base/factory-droid) covers the agent in more detail: the kinds of droids, the install commands and the models it runs.

## Where does Factory run?

Factory runs on your desktop, in your terminal and editor, in the browser, and inside the team tools where work gets assigned. Its [pricing page](https://factory.com/pricing) lists the desktop app, the CLI and the SDK on every individual plan, and Droid Computers from Plus up.

| Surface | What it is |
|---|---|
| [Factory App](https://docs.factory.com/factory-app/overview) | A desktop app for Mac and Windows to start, preview and review Droid sessions |
| [Droid CLI](https://docs.factory.com/droid-cli/quickstart) | The agent in your terminal, for macOS, Linux and Windows |
| [IDE integrations](https://docs.factory.com/ide-integrations) | VS Code, Cursor and Windsurf through an extension, plus JetBrains IDEs and Zed |
| [Web and mobile](https://docs.factory.com/) | Sessions synced to app.factory.ai, with nothing to install |
| [Delegations](https://docs.factory.com/delegations) | Mention `@Factory` in Slack or Microsoft Teams, or assign it a Linear or Jira issue |
| [Droid Exec](https://docs.factory.com/droid-exec/overview) | A headless mode for scripts and CI pipelines |
| [Droid Computers](https://docs.factory.com/droid-computers/overview) | Cloud machines Factory hosts, which keep their state between sessions |

Factory also has Python and TypeScript SDKs for building your own tools on Droid.

## How much does Factory AI cost?

Factory's individual plans cost $20, $100 or $200 a month, and its team plans start at $60 a month plus $40 a seat. These are the plans on [factory.com/pricing](https://factory.com/pricing):

| Plan | Price | Usage |
|---|---|---|
| Pro | $20 a month | Factory's base rate limits |
| Plus | $100 a month | About 5x Pro |
| Max | $200 a month | About 10x Pro |
| Teams | $60 a month, plus $40 a seat | Pro's limits for each seat, up to 10 seats |
| Business | Custom | Custom limits, SSO, SAML/SCIM, zero data retention |
| Enterprise | Custom | Unlimited seats, dedicated compute, on-premise options |

The pricing page lists no free plan. Usage is set by rolling 5-hour, 7-day and 30-day limits rather than a published token count. [Factory pricing](https://buildful.ai/knowledge-base/factory-pricing) explains how those limits work and what you can buy when you reach them.

## Who is Factory for?

Factory aims mainly at large companies. Its [funding post](https://factory.com/news/5-billion-valuation) says the new money is to scale its product "in the enterprise". The Business and Enterprise plans add the things a security team asks for: single sign-on, audit logs, data residency, on-premise deployment and admin controls over which models and commands Droid may use. The same post names Nvidia, Blackstone, Royal Bank of Canada, Palo Alto Networks, Adobe and T-Mobile as companies using it.

Individual developers can buy Pro, Plus or Max directly. Those plans include the desktop app, the CLI, the SDK, and cloud and local background agents. If you want one agent across your terminal, editor and Slack, with a choice of Claude, GPT, Gemini and open-weight models, that's what the individual plans cover.

## Where Buildful fits

Factory sells a governed system that spans code review, QA, security review and incident response. Buildful covers one part of that: it's a [background coding agent](https://buildful.ai/background-coding-agent) that takes a task to a tested pull request. You describe a task in the browser, Slack or Linear, like a new feature or a bug fix, and Buildful runs it in a private cloud sandbox, runs your checks, tests UI changes in a real browser, and opens a pull request on your GitHub repo.

Smart Mode picks the right open-weight model for each task, and on Pro and Team you can pick a frontier model like Claude or GPT yourself, with prepaid credit or your own API key. Buildful Pro is [$10 a month for 1,000 tasks](https://buildful.ai/pricing), or ₹750 in India, and Team is $40 a month for 3,000 tasks shared by unlimited members (₹3,500 in India). Factory Max is $200 a month, and [Factory AI pricing](https://buildful.ai/knowledge-base/factory-pricing) has every plan.

## Frequently asked questions

### Who is the CEO of Factory AI?

Matan Grinberg is Factory's co-founder and CEO, according to the company's [Claude Marketplace announcement](https://factory.com/news/claude-marketplace). He founded Factory in 2023 with Eno Reyes, and the company is based in San Francisco.

### Is Factory AI a good company?

Factory is a well-funded company with large customers. On September 15, 2026, it [raised $200 million at a $5 billion valuation](https://factory.com/news/5-billion-valuation), which it says brings its total funding to over $400 million, from investors including Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, Blackstone, Insight Partners and NEA. Factory says hundreds of thousands of developers use it, at companies including Nvidia, Adobe and T-Mobile.

### Is Factory AI free?

Factory's pricing page doesn't list a free plan. Its plans start with Pro at $20 a month. Business and Enterprise plans are priced through Factory's sales team.

### Is Factory AI the same as factory.com?

Yes. factory.ai redirects to factory.com, and the docs moved to docs.factory.com. Sign-in and the CLI installer still use app.factory.ai.

### Who owns the code Factory writes?

You do. Factory's pricing page says you keep 100% ownership of the code it generates and can use it however you like, including commercially.

### Which models does Factory AI use?

Factory runs models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and xAI, plus a set of open-weight models it calls Droid Core, such as GLM, Kimi, DeepSeek and MiniMax. Its [models page](https://docs.factory.com/models) lists them all, and you can also bring your own API keys.

---

Source: https://buildful.ai/knowledge-base/what-is-factory-ai