Data observability startup Revefi Inc. said today it has closed on $20 million in an early-stage funding round, timing the announcement with the launch of what it says is the world’s first-ever “AI data engineer.”

Today’s Series A round was led by Icon Ventures and saw participation from a host of other backers, including Mayfield, GTM Capital and StepStone Group, bringing the startup’s total amount raised to $30 million.

Revefi said its artificial intelligence-powered data engineer, called Raden, acts as a kind of autopilot for data teams, helping them to drive better business results and save money on the costs associated with their data lakes and data warehouses.

It’s really a kind of data observability tool, designed to provide reliable and timely insights into issues such as the accuracy and quality of their data, and ensure that the right data is being fed into the right business applications.

The other benefit of Raden is that it helps companies to keep a lid on their data spending. According to Revefi, the AI data engineer can help customers reduce their data warehousing costs by up to 50%, while increasing their operational efficiency by around 35%.

The company’s co-founders appear well-qualified to make good on those promises. Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Agrawal previously designed and developed a self-managing distributed data warehouse at ThoughtSpot Inc. that was purpose-built for interactive and ad hoc data analytics. Before that, he spent over a decade at Google LLC and Microsoft Corp. working on their database offerings.

Meanwhile, Revefi’s chief technology officer is Shashank Gupta, who previously worked for Meta Platforms Inc., where he helped to build a system that automates data quality for its cloud data warehouse. He also worked at ThoughtSpot, where he led that company’s data engineering team.

Preeti Rathi, general partner at Icon Ventures, said the co-founders’ background in high-performance databases and data quality tools is impressive and one of the main things that convinced him to back their company. “Their vision for an AI data engineer that augments and enhances data teams is exactly the kind of disruptive innovation that creates significant value for enterprises,” he added.

Revefi said the funds from today’s round will be used to support the launch of Raden and expand its product and customer success operations teams.

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