Software testing startup Antithesis Operations LLC today announced that it has raised $47 million in new funding to develop its software testing and debugging platform further and accelerate its go-to-market strategy.

Founded in 2018 by the team behind FoundationDB, a distributed database acquired by Apple in 2015 that now underpins Apple’s cloud infrastructure, the idea behind Antithesis was the belief that the most sophisticated organizations lacked the kind of deterministic software testing built into the database sold to Apple.

Antithesis says it has taken the rigorous testing approach of FoundationDB, matured it and after years of operating in stealth, it claims it’s the only commercially available system of its kind for general software testing.

The company argues that current software testing relies on developers manually writing their own tests, a time-consuming process that can only find bugs in execution paths anticipated ahead of time, meaning that bugs on unanticipated paths are missed.

Antithesis differs in that the platform continuously scans the newest software version under development for bugs inside a separate simulated environment and can perfectly reproduce and provide powerful debugging information for every bug it finds. Doing so allows software engineers to develop knowing any bugs will be found quickly and reported by Antithesis before they impact users, improving overall productivity and software quality.

“Our goal is to increase the reliability of software systems in the most efficient way so that the organizations we partner with can focus on growth and innovation rather than wasting valuable time and energy on testing and debugging,” co-founder and Chief Executive Will Wilson said in a statement.

Though launching only today, the company already has an impressive lineup of customers, including MongoDB Inc., Palantir Technologies Inc. and the Ethereum Foundation.

The $47 million “seed round” — if so, it would be one of the biggest seed rounds on record — was led by Amplify Partners LLC, Tamarack Global Technologies Inc. and First In Ventures LLC.

“Antithesis’ model of autonomous testing will be especially important as we increasingly rely on AI and LLM tools for code generation,” said Lenny Pruss, general partner at Amplify Partners. “There are endless possibilities, and we’re excited to be partnering with a company working on such cutting-edge technology.”

Image: Antithesis