Throughout his two decades of experience in the technology industry, CodiumAI Co-Founder and CEO Itamar Friedman has personally experienced the difficulty of creating test suites to check the logic of your code.. He discovered that while there are tools to test code security and performance, code logic testers are in short supply.
He launched CodiumAI to solve that problem with a solution that builds those tests automatically using generative AI, and his 9-month-old company has come out of hiding with a hefty $11 million initial investment.
“We have a lot of tools to check code for vulnerabilities and make sure it's protected. We have some tools to check performance, but we hardly have any tools that actually check the logic of the code, such as a tool that checks down to the line level of code and verifies that it works. This is really frustrating, and many developers spend 25-50% of their time writing tests and checking code logic."explains Friedman.
He says that most developers save time by using boilerplate code to start programming, and then fill it in with custom code. They often create tests to verify that the combined code works as designed. With CodiumAI, the enterprise replaces the need to build these logical tests manually with building the tests for you.
Friedman says the solution is to use generative AI to build these tests. Simply press the "Generate Tests" button and the program will automatically analyze your code and create a test suite. The developer can then interact with this code and request more specific tests, and the program automatically creates a new test based on those additional instructions.
It says that they have created a large custom language model called TestGPT, which is the core of the solution. “It is used to generate the code analysis, test plan, and test code. It is then used to interactively respond to user requests to clarify those tests."explains Friedman.
The company has been working with 1.000 early adopters for the past few months, and is opening up the free product to anyone who wants to try it out today. Friedman believes that if developers get involved early on with the free product, the company will earn money later, when it releases enterprise and team products with more advanced features designed for the special needs of these groups.
The company currently has 15 employees and is hiring more. He says that building a diverse team is a priority for him, even in the early stages of the company. “We already have a lot of diversity in the 15 people [who make up the team]. And it's important to us now, but [we recognize] that more can always be done and we put a lot of effort into it," he said.
The initial investment of $11 million was co-led by Vine Ventures and TLV Partners, along with several leading angel investors in the industry.
