General Catalyst Backs Startup in New AI Category: Software Testing

When it comes to the billion-dollar question of where businesses are seeing the biggest returns from conversational AI, automating software development has emerged as an early frontrunner. We have AI software to autocomplete lines of code, AI software to write entire apps, and soon, AI software to test other software.

That last one is the focus of Ranger, a year-old startup that’s building AI software to run quality assurance tests for businesses. To pursue that mission, the San Francisco-based company raised a $6.5 million seed round led by General Catalyst in December and a $2.4 million pre-seed round led by XYZ in November 2023, the startup told The Information exclusively.

QA tests are a necessary—but often tedious and manual—part of running a website or app, said Ranger founder and CEO Josh Ip. For instance, Instagram might want to test that users can react to their friends’ stories, or Snap might want to test that its Snapchat filters are working correctly. The monotonous nature of QA testing makes it an attractive automation candidate for businesses—and, importantly, the engineers themselves, Ip said. (Good news for engineers worried about more interesting parts of their jobs being taken!)