Autify, Inc. (HQ: San Francisco, USA, Japan: Tokyo, Japan, CEO: Ryo Chikazawa), provider of “Autify”,　AI-powered software testing automation platform, made an announcement that the company has received a total financing capital of USD 2.5 million in a seed round, by Global Brain Corporation, Salesforce Ventures, Archetype Ventures, as well as multiple individual investors. This financing activity has raised the total capital to USD 3.07 million.

Autify is the first Japanese team backed by Alchemist Accelerator, the top BtoB startup accelerator in the US. Ever since launching the closed beta version of Autify in March 2019, Autify has received demo requests from more than 150 companies without any marketing activities. The product has been introduced by dozens of rapidly growing startups and publicly listed companies. After undergoing further functional improvements, the product will be officially launched in October 2019.

The company plans to use the procured capital to reinforce product development and sales systems, as well as to explore the international market. Autify aims to find solutions to the headwinds of labor shortage in the software development field and help build a society in which people can concentrate on creative work by automating mundane tasks.

Changes in the Software Development Market Agile development, which speeds up the software development methods and development cycle, has become a mainstream method for responding to the rapid market changes taking place in recent years. 92% of the software businesses worldwide are already using agile development and 71% of them hope to be able to release at least once per week. However, in this type of cycle, if the software testing operations (QA) are manual and depend on the availability of people, they may take too long to complete, creating product release bottlenecks. Automation of software testing is, therefore, imperative for corporations promoting agile development.

Challenges in the Automation of Software Testing

Software companies are facing the following two major problems in the automation of testing:

1. Severe shortage of engineers capable of automating their testing scenarios. Today, when very few skilled engineers are available for product development, it is difficult to allocate some of them to the automation of testing.

2. High maintenance cost of the automation code. All automation code becomes outdated very quickly in an agile environment, where there are rapid changes in UI and specifications, and requires continuous maintenance.

Product Overview

Autify makes testing automation easy for anyone, even for non-engineers, by allowing them to automate the testing of web applications without writing program codes. The use of AI to monitor the changes in the application codes allows the testing scenarios to be repaired automatically, thus greatly reducing the maintenance costs. Autify allows easy automation of complex applications that use a lot of JavaScript, whose testing was difficult to automate with the conventional automation services. Autify provides integrations to external services such as Slack (a business communication tool), Circle CI (a continuous integration tool that automates the development), and TestRail (a test case management tool), and plans to integrate with more services. We will keep on responding to demo requests as they come. Both monthly and annual pricing plans are available according to usage and features.

Key Features of Autify

1. Automation of test scenarios without having to write a code

Automatic test scenarios are easy to create even for non-engineers, simply by clicking the “record” button and interacting with your application through your browser. No coding is required.

2. Automatic scenario maintenance with AI

AI detects changes in the source code and automatically repair the scenarios. Testing of websites undergoing frequent changes and/or using a lot of JavaScript can also be automated without any hassle.

3. Allows testing to be executed in any browser

The created test scenario can be executed in a variety of browser environments, including PCs and mobile devices. Cross-browser testing is easy too with frictionless configuration.

Future Business Developments

Autify will be focused on product development. We will improve our test automation experience by 1. Expanding the scope of automation, 2. Building in-house cross-browser testing environment, 3. Improving features for our Chrome extension, and 4. Improve AI algorithm to locate target elements.

Current Shareholders

Shareholders in the seed round

Global Brain Corporation (HQ: Tokyo, Japan, CEO: Yasuhiko Yurimoto)

Salesforce Ventures, the investment division of U.S. company, Salesforce.com, Inc. (Japanese company: Salesforce.com, Inc., HQ: Tokyo, Japan, Chairman and CEO: Shinichi Koide)

Archetype Ventures Inc. (HQ: Tokyo, Japan, Managing Partner: Shunpei Fukui)

As well as individual investors

*Honorifics have been omitted. Investor names have not been listed in any specific order.

Shareholders in the pre-seed round

East Ventures (HQ: Tokyo, Japan, CEO: Batara Eto, Taiga Matsuyama)

KLab Ventures, Inc. (HQ: Tokyo, Japan, President and CEO: Hirokazu Nagano)

Genesia Ventures, Inc. (HQ: Tokyo, Japan, CEO: Soichi Tajima)

GW Ventures (HQ: San Francisco, USA, Founder and Managing Director: Yoshinari Yoshikawa)

Kenji Niwa

Koichiro Yoshida

Shintaro Yamada

Yo Shibata

*Honorifics have been omitted. Names of the individual investors have been listed in English alphabetical order.

History

September 2016: Founded Locki, Inc. (San Francisco, USA)

July 2017: Raised USD 510,000 in Pre-seed round

August 2018: Accepted by Alchemist Accelerator program in the US as the first
Japanese team

January 2019: The company name was changed to Autify, Inc.

February 2019: Graduated from Alchemist Accelerator

March 2019: Launched closed beta version of Autify

July 2019: Raised USD 2,500,000 in seed round

September 2019: Official global launch of Autify

About Alchemist Accelerator

As one of the top accelerators in the US, Alchemist Accelerator offers a 6-month educational program for BtoB startup entrepreneurs. It was established in San Francisco in the year 2012 by Stanford University instructor, Ravi Belani.

About Autify, Inc.

Company Name: Autify, Inc.

Address of Japan Office: &WORK NINGYOCHO 2A, 6-4 Nihonbashitomizawa-cho, Chuo Ward, Tokyo 103-0006

CEO: Ryo Chikazawa

Founded: September 2, 2016

Business Activities: Software testing automation platform “Autify” development and sales

Website: https://autify.com/

Contact

Yuka Umezawa, PR Representative

Email: press@autify.com