Zed

Zed is a high-performance, open-source code editor built entirely from scratch in Rust, using a custom GPU-accelerated UI framework called GPUI rather than Electron or Chromium. This foundation gives Zed near-instant startup, smooth rendering, and low input latency even on large files and repositories, positioning it as a fundamentally faster alternative to editors built on web technologies. Rather than bolting AI on as a plugin, Zed treats agentic collaboration as a core part of the editor: its Parallel Agents feature lets developers run multiple AI agent threads across different projects at once, its Agentic Editing mode enables fluent delegation of coding tasks with live progress tracking, and its open-weight Zeta2 model powers fast, context-aware edit predictions that anticipate a developer's next move rather than just the next token.

Zed connects to a wide range of AI models and tools through the Agent Client Protocol (ACP), an open standard Zed co-developed with JetBrains that lets external agentic CLIs like Claude Code, Codex, and OpenCode integrate directly with the editor, alongside MCP server support for extending agent knowledge. Beyond AI, Zed includes native Git support, a built-in debugger using the Debug Adapter Protocol, real-time multiplayer collaboration with live cursors and screen sharing, multibuffer editing, and first-class Vim bindings, all wrapped in an extension ecosystem covering hundreds of languages and themes.

Founded in 2021 (some sources cite 2019 for initial development) by Nathan Sobo, Antonio Scandurra, and Max Brunsfeld, the team behind the original Atom editor and the Tree-sitter parsing library now embedded in most modern editors, Zed Industries is based in the Denver/Boulder, Colorado area. After going fully open source in 2024, the company has raised roughly $44.5 million in total funding, including a $32 million Series B led by Sequoia Capital in 2025 with participation from angel investors including Figma's Dylan Field and GitHub's Tom Preston-Werner. Zed reached its 1.0 stable release in April 2026 and launched a dedicated Business tier for organizations shortly after.

Zed offers three tiers. Personal is $0 forever, including 2,000 accepted edit predictions per month and unlimited use with your own API keys or external agents like Claude Agent and Codex CLI. Pro is $10/month with unlimited edit predictions, $5 of included tokens, and usage-based billing beyond that at API list price plus 10%, billed either at month-end or per $10 of overage incurred, whichever comes first; a two-week free trial with $20 of token credits is available (Anthropic's Opus models are excluded from the trial). Business is $30 per seat per month with no minimum seat count, adding org-wide AI model policies, data governance controls, role-based access controls, and unified spend visibility across the organization; order form contracts are available at 25+ seats. Business does not currently offer a free trial, and SSO, SAML, and SCIM are planned but not yet available.