Software program testing is difficult. Even with the suitable expertise in place, it doesn’t at all times go as deliberate — significantly when executed at scale. In a 2020 survey from Electrical Cloud, 58% of builders blamed software program bugs on check infrastructure and course of points — not design defects.

The marketplace for software program testing options is kind of huge, unsurprisingly, with one estimate pegging it at $55.98 billion. There’s loads of distributors within the area, from startups like Qase, EvaluAgent and Codegen to incumbents like Azure and AWS.

However a brand new entrant, Antithesis, thinks it might probably make a splash.

Antithesis, which emerged from stealth right this moment, was based by the group behind FoundationDB, the distributed database platform, which Apple quietly acquired in 2015. Following the Apple acquisition, the FoundationDB group dispersed to pursue different Huge Tech firm jobs, however finally arrived on the identical conclusion: even subtle organizations lacked the software program testing instruments they wanted to be extra environment friendly.

“So, 5 years in the past, plenty of us received again collectively to construct Antithesis,” Will Wilson, the co-founder and CEO of Antithesis, instructed TechCrunch in an electronic mail interview. “We took the rigorous testing strategy of FoundationDB, matured it, and, after years of working in stealth, made it the one commercially obtainable system of its form for common software program testing.”

Antithesis’ product constantly scans the most recent model of software program beneath growth for bugs inside a separate-from-production, simulated setting (full with digital {hardware}, service and networking elements), reproducing and offering debugging info for bugs it finds. This strategy eliminates the necessity for builders to manually write their very own assessments, Wilson claims, which is often a time-consuming and fraught course of.

Antithesis runs software program beneath a spread of situations and predefined properties to report any unintended conduct. When it notices attention-grabbing conduct, Antithesis makes a duplicate of the system state and explores attainable outcomes from that time — “extra intensely” exploring paths that produce irregular logs.

“Autonomous testing is a vital utility [that can make] builders extra productive,” Wilson mentioned. [It] provides engineers nearly half their time again that they might’ve spent on bug-related points and permits them to develop with confidence.”

That’s assuming Antithesis’ tech works as marketed. Buyers appear keen about it in any case — Antithesis right this moment closed a $47 million seed spherical spherical from Amplify Companions, Tamarack International, First In Ventures and angel traders together with Howard Lerman, the founding father of Yext and Roam.

The spherical — unusually giant for a seed — values Antithesis at $215 million, Reuters first reported and a supply acquainted with the matter confirmed to TechCrunch.

“A bunch of present traders have been very excited by our progress and got here to us with a proposal to speculate extra on pleasant phrases,” Wilson mentioned. “We jumped on the alternative to maintain working with folks we trusted and to keep away from a giant fundraising roadshow with its attendant distractions.”

Virginia-based Antithesis is already working with prospects together with Palantir, Ethereum and MongoDB and different unnamed “giant enterprises” in addition to startups. However the funding will allow it to develop that base, Wilson says, by increasing Antithesis’ gross sales and advertising groups, rising engineering and analysis efforts and supporting ongoing function and product growth.