From TechCrunch, June 27:
Diffblue, a University of Oxford spin-out, raises $22M Series A to bring AI to software development
Oxford University continues to be
a hotbed of AI talent,
fuelling not just academic research into AI but also the ambitions of
startups and large technology companies alike. The latest Oxford-based
AI startup to make headlines is
Diffblue, a University of Oxford spin-out that is applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) to software development.
The young company has raised $22 million in Series A funding, one
year since leaving academia. The round is led by Goldman Sachs Principal
Strategic Investments, alongside Oxford Sciences Innovations (OSI), and
the Oxford Technology and Innovations Fund (OTIF).
Born out of ten years of research, Diffblue describes its core AI as
being able to build an exact mathematical model of any code base, with
just a few examples provided. The resulting model then allows a deep
semantic understanding of what a computer program is trying to do, from
which a number of aspects of software development can be automated.
Initially, Diffblue are working on three products built on the core AI
engine.
The first is a testing product that automatically spots bugs and
writes tests, which is one of the lower-hanging and most laborious parts
of quality software development. It’s also a crucial one, especially
for mission-critical applications where a software failure can cost
lives or huge amounts of money.
The second Diffblue product in the works is a security product that
automatically flags up exploitable bugs and generates tests for those
bugs.
The third product is a refactoring product that automatically
rewrites badly expressed or out of date code (think: an AI that can
automatically upgrade a codebase to support the latest implementation of
a programming language or framework)....MORE
See also June's "
The long, slow, rotten march of progress":
The new world, dragging itself sticky and stinking out of the swamps, has an answer for all your problems: you should learn to code.
The old certainties are gone, the natural world is dying, and the sun
that once looked down on us is being blacked out by an endless swarm of
automated delivery drones. You can no longer expect forty years of
drudgery and then a spluttering death from good old-fashioned
blue-collar pneumoconiosis. You can’t make it through life hating your
boss instead of yourself, not when new forms of labour discipline demand
that you be your own boss. Your flesh is already obsolete. But there’s
an answer: to survive in the coming era of automation, you have to bring
it in faster; announce its apocalypse, learn to code, add yourself to
the army of programmers building an appier tomorrow....MORE
