LambdaTest, a cloud-based cross-browser app testing platform, raises $45M

LambdaTest, a cloud-based platform used by some of the world’s biggest companies to test their apps work across different platforms, has raised $45 million.

Founded in 2017, LambdaTest pithces itself as a “test orchestration platform,” one that allows developers and quality assurance (QA) teams to run manual or automated tests for web and native mobile apps.

Test automation involves setting up and conducting repeatable tests on software with minimal manual input required, which saves valuable time and resources. This could involve “cross browser” testing, which verifies that an application works equally across different browser and system configurations on desktop and mobile.

Shift-left

At its core, LambdaTest is capitalizing on the fact that every company these days is a software company. The pressure to ship new features as part of a fast-moving continuous delivery cycle increases the chance that bugs will enter the live codebase — so catching bugs earlier is vital. This is also partly why the global test automation market was pegged as a $20.7 billion sector last year, a figure that’s set to more than double within four years.

“Over the past year, the pandemic has made it almost imperative for businesses to go digital — [but] going digital also means more testing,” LambdaTest cofounder and CEO Asad Khan told VentureBeat. “Another significant trend that has been happening over the past few years is ‘shift-left’ — more and more world-class companies are shifting their testing left to catch bugs earlier in the cycle, and ensure a better customer experience.”

Other notable players in the space include BrowserStack, which recently hit a lofty $4 billion valuation off the back of a $200 million fundraise, and Sauce Labs which counts major customers such as Walmart and Splunk. Elsewhere, newer entrants such as Testsigma are looking to simplify software test automation through an open source approach.

But in an increasingly competitive space, LambdaTest is less concerned about differentiating on features per se. It’s more about striving to be the best in the business — and it’s hard to ignore its customer base which includes the likes of Apple, Microsoft, and Cisco.

“From our inception, we’ve really believed in listening to our customers — for our core test execution platform, we realized that the bigger pain points for customers were not features, but reliability, performance, and speed,” Khan said. “While our core platform has all the necessary features, we decided that we’d be the platform that has the best test execution speed and least flakiness, thereby increasing the reliability of the tests performed and enabling faster time to market for our customers.”

San Francisco-based LambdaTest had previously raised around $25 million, and with another $45 million in the bank, the company said that it plans to “push the boundaries of cloud-based test orchestration,” with a particular focus on speed, reliability, and performance.

“Given today’s rapid pace of innovation, catching bugs and fixing them early is what distinguishes the best companies from the rest,” Khan said. “Any brand today must offer the best customer experience across all possible types of real devices, operating systems, browsers, and their many versions — and more importantly, at record speeds. Developers and testers are at the center of it all.”

LambdaTest’s latest funding round was led by Premji Invest, with participation from Sequoia Capital India, Telstra Ventures, Blume Ventures, and Leo Capital.