Functionize is an AI-native, cloud-based test automation platform that uses autonomous, self-healing agents (digital workers) to create, run, and maintain end-to-end software QA workflows across applications. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Functionize founder and CEO Tamas Cser to gain a deeper understanding of the company.
Tamas Cser’s Background
Could you tell me more about your background? Cser said:
“My path has been non-linear—from musician, to consultant to the founder of Functionize. I grew up in Hungary, and as a musician I was given the opportunity to study in Vienna. I then came to the United States as a teenager and attended college here at the University of Rochester. While I loved music, I wasn’t going to make a career out of it. As the internet took off in the early 2000s, I focused on honing my computer skills, and specifically learning dynamic HTML and web applications. From there I launched a software development consultancy in San Francisco which I ran for a decade. Looking for a new challenge, and constantly running into companies challenged by software testing in my consulting role, I founded Functionize to accelerate software delivery.”
Formation Of The Company
How did the idea for the company come together? Cser shared:
“During the decade I spent consulting, I’d work with companies developing software and as we’d release changes to the software daily, or even multiple times each day. In the course of that work, it became evident that there was no good mousetrap that existed to help engineers shrink maintenance needs, reduce risk, and accelerate time to market.”
“In the mid-2010s approaching 2020, the developer market was highly competitive. Finding qualified developers for any task was challenging, and their compensation constituted, by far, the largest portion of my costs. Therefore, I concluded that hiring a dedicated team for this was infeasible, and paying existing developers to write test code was unsustainable. There had to be a better method. The core idea was: could we leverage data science and cloud computing to generate the necessary tests without manual writing? Functionize was founded to set the standard for test automation by empowering engineers to release faster and keep pace with innovation.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Cser reflected:
“Landing Salesforce as our first big customer was a favorite moment—one that validated the work we had done building our platform and that opened the doors for future opportunities in terms of funding and working with other big companies.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Cser explained:
“Functionize’s unified AI-powered test automation platform is designed to automate web, mobile, API, and packaged enterprise applications using a no-code/low-code approach powered by specialized, self-healing AI agents.”
“The Functionize platform is built around several “agents” that handle different parts of the testing lifecycle:
- Create Agent: This agent uses natural language processing (NLP) to translate plain-English requirements or user stories into executable, automated test cases, making test creation accessible to non-technical users.
- Execute Agent: This component runs tests in parallel across various browsers and environments using the Functionize Automation Cloud. It generates detailed audit logs and uses a machine learning model to dynamically interact with UI elements, which reduces flakiness.
- Diagnose Agent: When a test fails, this agent performs advanced root cause analysis to pinpoint the exact reason for the failure, explaining it in plain language to speed up the debugging process.
- Maintain Agent: This is the core of Functionize’s “self-healing” capability. It detects changes in the application’s UI and suggests or automatically applies necessary updates to test cases, significantly reducing test maintenance time.
- Document Agent: This agent automatically generates detailed, real-time documentation and audit-ready execution logs for all workflows, which is especially valuable for compliance purposes.”
Challenges Faced
Have you faced any challenges in your sector of work recently? Cser acknowledged:
“One of the biggest challenges, which also presents unique opportunities, is timing the market correctly. If you present your technology early, you gain knowledge and information about the market while your technology catches up, but you have to stretch your funding during this time period.
“While Functionize came to the market early, we got ahead of problem-based test generation back in 2019, we already have more than eight years of data to work from, and now we have a first mover advantage to get to full autonomy first (where agents can do the end-to-end work of testing).”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Cser noted:
“Over nearly a decade our technology has evolved considerably—from a cloud-first and big data ready technology (2016) to self-healing technology with near-perfect machine learning selection and visual testing capabilities (2020) to genAI technology with the first GPT model trained (2023) to agent-based technology with generative agents at work (2024). We see a future of full autonomy where agents work together to perform fully autonomous test cycles with little to no intervention. As technology continues to evolve, we’ll advance alongside it to keep our customers at the forefront of what’s possible.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Cser cited:
“Following Functionize’s founding in 2014 and cloud-based autonomous testing platform launch in 2015, the company has raised over $67 million in total funding, grown to over 100 employees, established key partnerships (including a strategic investment from Wipro Ventures in 2021 and a partnership with Solution Architects Group, LLC in 2024), and has a number of technological and performance milestones as well, including:
- Functionize has released several major platform updates, including Platform 6.0 in October 2024, which introduced intelligent AI-powered agents designed to generate, execute, and self-heal tests with minimal human input.
- Customer use of the platform has led to significant results, with over one billion agentic AI actions run in 2024 alone, achieving up to 90% reduction in test maintenance costs and 10x productivity gains.”
Customer Success Stories
Can you share any specific customer success stories? Cser highlighted:
“In 2024 alone, Functionize’s customers ran over one billion agentic AI actions in the Functionize platform. These intelligent agents have:
- Reduced test maintenance costs by up to 90%
- Delivered 10x productivity gains
- Enabled both technical and non-technical users to build and maintain tests in minutes, not days
For a few specific examples:
- GE Healthcare was able to increase productivity by 5x, while reducing testing cycle time by 60%.
- Norstella was able to automate 70% of user acceptance testing for the first time, while reducing test maintenance overhead by 60%.”
Funding
Are you able to discuss funding details? Cser revealed:
“In the early days, Functionize was self-funded and investments from friends and family. We announced a $16 million Series A round in March, 2019 and most recently a $41 million series B this past August.”
“This investment bringsFunctionize closer to fully autonomous QA that operates within sprints, requires minimal human intervention, and extends our value to address broader CIO workflow inefficiencies beyond functional testing.”
Total Addressable Market (TAM)
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Cser assessed:
“The automation testing market is estimated at $35.29 billion in 2025, and is expected to reach $76.72 billion by 2030, with a 16.80% CAGR.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Cser affirmed:
“Our competitive advantage lies in years of specialized AI development and petabytes of enterprise application data that have produced custom-tailored models specifically designed for test automation (as compared with our competitors who use generic foundation models for basic script generation). Instead of just speeding up testing, we solve for script brittleness and high-maintenance costs that plague traditional testing approaches.”
“Investor JD Mumford, Partner, Mumford Investment, summed it up well: ‘Functionize is running agentic processes at scale with enterprise customers, and is the only agentic AI test automation company that delivers autonomous test creation, execution, maintenance, and documentation at a scale and speed unmatched by human labor or traditional script-based tools. We are proud to support the next chapter of their growth story.’ This validation underscores not only the innovation behind our platform, but also the tangible value it’s bringing to enterprises today.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future goals? Cser emphasized:
“Our primary goal is to build full autonomy—complete automation of testing (including fixing breaks when they happen instead of just identifying them). This will remove the need for human intervention on mundane and unbelievably repetitive tasks.”
“As we work towards that goal, we’re doubling down on advancing our agentic automation platform to make test creation and self-healing even faster and smarter, helping teams move with greater speed and confidence. To support this momentum, we’re scaling our cloud infrastructure to meet the growing demands of enterprise customers while expanding our go-to-market and engineering teams so we can serve more organizations around the world. We’re also enhancing integrations with leading applications and platform providers, making it easier for customers to seamlessly fit intelligent QA into their workflows. And as we continue to push the boundaries, we’re exploring new industry verticals and markets where intelligent QA can deliver even greater impact.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics you would like to discuss? Cser concluded:
“QA tools are built on 25 year old technology that’s had little to no evolution. In order to ensure quality in QA, organizational leaders need to make it more of a priority, developers need to build models from the ground up to understand how the underlying technology works, and the agentic AI technologies that can take QA beyond incremental improvements to a complete QA transformation need to be leveraged.”
