Software testing is difficult. Even with the right people in place, things don't always go as planned, especially when executed at scale. In his 2020 study for Electric Cloud, 58% of developers said software bugs are caused by testing infrastructure and process issues rather than design flaws.
Unsurprisingly, the market for software testing solutions is huge, with some estimates pegging it at $55.98 billion. There are many vendors in this space, from startups like Qase, EvaluAgent, and Codegen to established companies like Azure and AWS.
But new entrant Antithesis believes this could create a buzz.
Today, the antithesis that has emerged from stealth was founded by the team at FoundationDB, a distributed database platform that Apple quietly acquired in 2015. After the Apple acquisition, the FoundationDB team dispersed to pursue work at other Big Tech companies, but ultimately the conclusion was the same: Even sophisticated organizations need to be more efficient. Software testing tools were lacking.
“So, five years ago, a few of us got together again and built Antithesis,” Will Wilson, co-founder and CEO of Antithesis, told TechCrunch in an email interview. “We took FoundationDB's rigorous testing approach, matured it, and operated it in stealth for many years to make it the only commercially available system of its kind for general software testing. did.”
Antithesis' products continuously scan for bugs in the latest versions of software under development in a simulated environment (complete with virtual hardware, services, and network components) that is separate from the production environment and identify any bugs found. Reproduce and provide debug information. This approach, Wilson argues, eliminates the need for developers to manually write their own tests. This is usually a lengthy and difficult process.
Antithesis runs software under various conditions and predefined properties and reports unintended behavior. When Antithesis notices interesting behavior, it creates a copy of the system state and investigates possible outcomes from that point on. In other words, investigate paths that produce anomalous logs “more intensively.”
“Autonomous testing is an important application [that can make] It increases developer productivity,” Wilson said. “[It] This gives engineers back almost half of the time they would have spent on bug-related issues and allows them to develop with confidence. ”
That's assuming Antithesis' technology works as advertised. Either way, investors seem to be excited about this – Antithesis today announced a $47 million investment from angel investors including Amplify Partners, Tamarack Global, First In Ventures, and Yext and Roam founder Howard Lerman. Completed a seed round of USD.
The round is unusually large for a seed, valuing Antithesis at $215 million, first reported by Reuters and confirmed to TechCrunch by a source familiar with the matter.
“A group of existing investors are very excited about our progress and have approached us with an offer to invest further on friendly terms,” Mr Wilson said. “We jumped at the opportunity to continue working with people we trust and avoid the distractions of large fundraising roadshows.”
Virginia-based Antithesis already works with customers including Palantir, Ethereum, MongoDB and other unnamed “big companies” as well as startups. However, the latest funding will allow Antithesis to expand its base by expanding its sales and marketing teams, expanding its engineering and research efforts, and supporting continued feature and product development, Wilson said. says.