Gentrace Secures $8 Million in Series A Funding to Enhance Generative AI Testing and Development Tools
Gentrace, a San Francisco-based company specializing in testing and monitoring generative AI applications, has secured $8 million in Series A funding. This round was led by Matrix Partners, with participation from Headline and K9 Ventures, along with angel investors and advisors from prominent companies such as Linear, Figma, Handshake, Webflow, Gem, Chronosphere, Ironclad, and Asana.
Founded in 2020, Gentrace focuses on enhancing the quality, safety, and compliance of large language model (LLM) outputs. The company’s platform provides a comprehensive testing environment that models real-world applications, offering detailed analytics to assess AI model performance. A key feature of Gentrace’s platform is Experiments, which enables cross-functional teams to collaborate in purpose-built testing environments. This allows teams to test AI outputs directly, preview test outcomes, anticipate errors, and explore “what-if” scenarios, all while integrating seamlessly with existing workflows and tools like OpenAI, Pinecone, and Rivet.
The funding will be used to accelerate product development and expand Gentrace’s engineering, product, and go-to-market functions to meet the growing demand for AI development tools. The company aims to make LLM development more accessible beyond engineering teams, addressing the challenge of ensuring reliability and safety in AI applications.
Doug Safreno, co-founder and CEO of Gentrace, emphasized the need for better collaboration and testing tools in AI development. “Generative AI represents a paradigm shift in software development, but the reality is there’s way too much noise and not enough signal on how to test and build them easily or correctly,” he said. “We’re not just creating another dev tool — we’re reimagining how entire organizations can collaborate and build better LLM products.”
Early adopters of Gentrace’s platform, such as Webflow and Quizlet, have seen significant improvements in their testing processes. Quizlet, an education technology company, uses generative AI to create study tools from unstructured notes and materials. Madeline Gilbert, a staff machine learning engineer at Quizlet, noted that Gentrace allowed them to implement custom evaluations crucial for their unique use cases. “It’s dramatically improved our ability to predict the impact of even small changes in our LLM implementations,” she said.
Gentrace’s solution has enabled Quizlet to increase testing frequency from twice a month to more than 20 times a week, significantly improving the speed of iteration with testing. This demonstrates the potential of Gentrace’s platform to enhance the efficiency and reliability of AI development processes.
With the new funding, Gentrace plans to further develop its Experiments tool to provide greater access to generative AI testing for a variety of team makeups, including future plans for guided optimization. The company’s goal is to make AI development more accessible and reliable, addressing the growing need for robust testing and monitoring tools in the AI industry.
The investment in Gentrace reflects the increasing importance of AI development tools and the need for comprehensive testing and monitoring solutions. As industries continue to integrate generative AI into their offerings, the demand for reliable and safe AI applications will only grow. Gentrace’s platform is positioned to meet this demand, offering a critical tool for companies looking to harness the potential of AI while ensuring its reliability and safety.