Continuous software delivery startup Harness Inc. announced a merger today with application programming interface security startup Traceable Inc., which will bring its cybersecurity technology to the development and operations pipeline.

Harness and Traceable are co-founded and helmed by Jyoti Bansal (pictured), who serves both as chief executive officer. Harness launched in 2017 with the mission to assist in the software development process. It has since grown into a platform that uses machine learning algorithms to monitor software releases to avoid problems as they are built and deployed. Traceable launched in 2020 as a cybersecurity startup that protects, secures and tests APIs, the connective tissue that allows different pieces of software to talk to each other.

Bansal previously founded AppDynamics, which Cisco Systems Inc. acquired in 2017 for $3.7 million just before the company planned to go public.

Harness’ platform for continuous delivery-as-a-service makes it easier for developers to focus on their coding work and discover bugs and issues before they’re pushed into production, even with small updates. It does this by automating tests and tasks during the development pipeline that allows for the detection of anomalies, errors and potential problems before they go live. If something does make it into production, it automates rollbacks to reduce the impact bugs might have on customers.

In the industry, this is known as CI/CD, or continuous integration and delivery. This practice allows companies to push out frequent, small updates, sometimes several times a day or a week. In the past, software development used to stack up updates and push them out monthly, but the new paradigm requires developers to stay on top of rapid feature releases.

This continuity of development is fundamental to DevOps, a set of practices and technologies that merges software development and information technology operations teams to improve the speed and reliability of software releases.

With this increasing demand for release speed also comes an equally increased need for security at every stage of the development lifecycle. Engineering and security teams are becoming ever more enmeshed as vulnerabilities in code begin to crop up during this rapid development cycle and the detection of exploits must happen sooner rather than later.

“Software teams should not have to choose between speed and security when delivering innovation to their customers,” said Bansal, adding that a unified approach to security and development will benefit both customer bases. “The mutual interest from Harness and Traceable customers in an integrated DevSecOps platform has substantially accelerated over the last year, and the timing is right to deliver on this industry demand.”

The startup has gone through multiple acquisitions following the industry trend towards increasing automation and productivity throughout the development lifecycle. The most recent acquisitions included its competitor Armory Inc. and feature flag experimentation management startup Split Software Inc.

It’s become increasingly clear the industry has been moving to a place where development and security are merging together, Nick Durkin, field chief technology officer at Harness told SiliconANGLE in an interview. Making this the perfect time for Harness and Traceable to merge teams. According to Durkin, customers of both companies already bring up development during security meetings and security during CI/CD meetings.

“Our goal is to shift the information and bring it to the smartest people at the right time,” said Durkin “I think that’s really what this merger is allowing us to do as a whole. Bringing the code, the application and secure that through the whole entire software development lifecycle right into production. That’s the most important thing.”

Harness said in the announcement that the combined company will place a focus on agentic artificial intelligence, an AI capability where intelligent agents make decisions with little or no human intervention. Together, the two companies are building a library of AI-native agents, and datasets to power them, that will enhance delivery speed and security for application development.

Durkin said that Harness brought AI and machine learning algorithms right after launch and aimed to use the “appropriate technology to address the appropriate problem,” whether it was an algorithm or generative AI.

“We want to use the right tool for the right job,” said Durkin. “That’s been how we’ve operating since 2018 and every single thing we’ve done has been removing the worst part of people’s jobs. So every AI we’ve ever created was about removing all the toil, removing all the worst part. Now with agentic AI. It’s really about the same thing.”

The merger is planned to close later this month or early next. The resulting company will have about 1,100 employees and $250 million in expected 2025 annualized revenue, up 50% from a year ago, with a valuation of about $5 billion.

Photo: Harness