Test.ai raises $11 million Series A led by Google to let AI bots handle your app testing

Test.ai, the pioneer in AI-powered user scenario testing for mobile and web apps, has raised $11 million Series A funding to catalyze product development, grow the team, and accelerate their global app testing campaign. The latest round was led by Gradient Ventures, Google’s AI-focused venture fund, with participation from e.ventures, Uncork Capital, and Zetta Venture Partners. So far, Test.ai has raised a total of $18 million in funding.

Founded in 2015 by Jason Arbon, Justin Liu, and Ryan Castor, Test.ai (formerly Appdiff) is the world’s first truly AI-powered test automation solution that improves the speed and quality of testing to meet the demands of today’s agile development environment. The San Francisco, California-based startup lets software developers stop writing tedious test automation scripts, leading to shorter testing cycles and faster time to market.Their test bots have been trained on tens of thousands of the top apps and have learned how to recognize and execute test scenarios automatically, dramatically reducing the need for human intervention.

Test.ai provides automated test coverage and eliminates the mundane aspects of testing so testers can apply their skills to creative problem solving, and provide greater value to their organizations. No programming is required to use Test.ai. Anyone can use test.ai—identify a few screens and elements in your app, and design a test case so the bots can verify your app’s functionality. It’s also maintenance free. Their AI bots figure out how to execute tests even when the user interface or certain flows in your app change. Test.ai is funded by Gradient Ventures, e.ventures, Uncork Capital, and Zetta Ventures Partners.

Co-Founders Jason Arbon and Justin Liu launched test.ai after watching thousands of companies pour millions of dollars into test processes that were slow, time-consuming, and expensive. “It is frustrating to see company after company get stuck in the software testing bottleneck,” said Jason Arbon, Co-Founder, CEO, and author of How Google Tests Software. “We wanted to leverage our backgrounds in mobile, testing, and AI to create a solution that automates the testing process at scale. Now engineers can focus on doing what they do best—solving problems and building products.”

“Every advancement in training AI systems enables an advancement in user testing, and test.ai is the leader in AI-powered testing technology. We’re excited to help them supercharge their growth as they test every app in the world,” said Anna Patterson, Founder and Managing Partner at Gradient Ventures. “In a couple years, AI testing will be ingrained into every company’s product flow.”

The test.ai platform has been trained to recognize elements and screens in a mobile user interface, just like a human tester would. In the same way that AI and machine learning have been applied to play games and drive cars, test.ai has trained bots to recognize and execute your most critical user scenarios automatically, without needing to write a single line of code.

“Test.ai exemplifies the type of company that we aim to invest in at e.ventures, with them disrupting an antiquated global market, developing a category defining product, and having assembled a team that is truly best in class,” said Brendan Wales, Partner at e.ventures.

With the funding, test.ai plans to focus on supporting a growing enterprise customer base, and to bring their service to all app teams at scale. Test.ai is currently hiring for their product engineering and machine learning teams.