Momentic raises $15 million to automate software testing

Product demos get all the attention, but software development often involves things like debugging, quality assurance, and testing. It’s the tedious but crucial work that keeps software running the way it should, and as developers look to automate more of their workloads, this is increasingly being done by artificial intelligence.

On Monday, AI testing startup Momentic said it had raised $15 million in a Series A round led by Standard Capital, with participation from Dropbox Ventures. Existing investors Y Combinator, FCVC, Transpose Platform and Karman Ventures also participated in the round. The new financing is based on a $3.7 million seed round provided by the company Announced in March.

Momentic makes tools for software testing and verification, a field currently occupied by open source frameworks like Playwright and Selenium. These tools provide complex and precise controls, but Momentic relies on artificial intelligence to make the process simple and efficient.

“We help our customers make sure their products work,” said co-founder Wei Wei Wu. “They can describe their critical user flows in plain English and our AI will automate that.”

Both Wu and his co-founder Jeff Ahn have backgrounds in development tools at companies like Qualtrics and WeWork. (Wu is particularly proud of his contributions to open source Node.js.)

The biggest constant for all of these companies, as Wu saw it, was the problem of code verification. “Testing has been the biggest pain point for every team I’ve ever worked with,” Wu told TechCrunch.

Momentic’s AI-based approach has already attracted a number of customers. The company currently has 2,600 users across its client base, which includes companies such as Notion, Xero, Bilt, Webflow and Retool. Wu was hesitant about revenue and profitability numbers, but says the product has shown enough growth to convince investors.

It is worth noting that test automation makes implementing them at scale much easier, and has the potential to raise overall volume to levels that were previously impossible. Wu estimates that in the past month, the company has automated more than 200 million testing steps.

The company’s biggest competitor may be the base models themselves. both of them OpenAI and Anthropic Provide tutorials on proxy testing, based on the growing computer capabilities of their models. As these models evolve, the opportunity for enterprise SaaS companies like Momentic may shrink.

For now, Wu is focusing on developing his product with the new funding. The company launched support for mobile environments in August, and hopes to build out more sophisticated test case management once it has a few engineers on hand.

As Wu sees it, the rise of automated programming will create a lot of new applications — and more demand for products like his. “All of these applications need to be tested,” he said. “They care about quality, and we will deliver it to them.”