Gitlab, which sells software program coding instruments utilized by greater than half of Fortune 500 corporations together with Nvidia and Goldman Sachs, is including synthetic intelligence options throughout its product portfolio and utilizing them to enhance productiveness.
Environmental concerns have been built-in into each plans, and Gitlab adopted pointers in 2025 that outline what AI software program distributors ought to disclose as a part of gross sales contracts. Gitlab’s chief data officer helped write these guidelines.
“We don’t need to discourage AI use,” mentioned Stacy Cline, senior director of sustainability at Gitlab. “Our objective is to encourage intentional use, since environment friendly prompts and workflows cut back each value and power consumption. It’s vital that workers perceive the power and sources behind the instruments they’re utilizing day by day.”
Gitlab’s “Inexperienced DevOps” coverage, which contains sustainability concerns into software program app design processes, considers components such because the carbon footprint related to completely different cloud computing companies used for coaching or to run queries.
“Inside sustainable AI, we deal with understanding its carbon value, encouraging accountable use, getting the appropriate information and programs set as much as measure our emissions and being clear about our work,” Cline mentioned.
Gitlab’s direct emissions are negligible. Its prime sources of greenhouse gasoline emissions are bought items and companies, particularly cloud software program from Amazon Net Providers and Google, and enterprise journey.
These classes account for 52 p.c and 43 p.c of Gitlab’s total carbon footprint, respectively, according to its 2025 sustainability report. (Primarily based on previous publishing dates, Gitlab’s subsequent report is due in mid-July.)
Gitlab pledged to get 70 p.c of its biggest-emitting suppliers to set science-based emissions discount targets by 2029. It hasn’t supplied a current progress report about that objective, however is speaking about subsequent steps with greater than 85 of its closest companions.
AI-boosted shortcuts
Gitlab’s sustainability staff created a number of AI brokers to assist its agenda, together with a instrument to assessment “a whole bunch” of requests for proposals and buyer questionnaires.
To assist tame the corporate’s giant travel-related footprint, the staff compiled an inventory of occasion sustainability options and wrote an AI immediate that can be utilized by workers planning occasions to check the carbon impression of assorted locations. The data is a part of Gitlab’s company handbook.
The staff additionally used NotebookLM, which makes use of particular paperwork to generate responses, to digest data from prolonged sustainability and ESG disclosures and create specialised content material for its gross sales staff. The output was a mini-podcast that means 5 speaking factors {that a} salesperson can use with clients which have company sustainability commitments.
“By doing this, we ensured that probably the most related content material reaches the appropriate audiences in a format that’s straightforward to digest,” Cline mentioned
Gitlab can also be encouraging different builders — its instruments have greater than 50 million registered customers — to make use of AI as the muse for brand new company sustainability purposes.
The corporate hosts quarterly hackathons, which now embody a “inexperienced agent” class. The successful inexperienced agent for the hackathon hosted in February and March of this yr was Inexperienced Pipe, which estimates carbon emissions related to design decisions made throughout software program growth processes.