Diffblue, a UK-based artificial intelligence technology developer based on University of Oxford research, has raised $22m in a series A round backed by university venturing fund Oxford Sciences Innovation, according to TechCrunch.
Goldman Sachs led the round through its Principal Strategic Investments unit, while the Oxford Technology and Innovations Fund, a vehicle operating under the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) framework.
Diffblue is based on research by Daniel Kroening, professor of computer science at University of Oxford. The company uses artificial intelligence (AI) technology to produce an exact mathematical model of a software’s code base from just a few examples.
The technology enables a semantic understanding of what an application is doing, with that data then serving as the basis for software development automation.
The money will help the spinout work on its first three products exploiting the core AI technology. The first product aims to automatically spot bugs, while the second product seeks to automatically identify potential security vulnerabilities.
The third product aims to automatically rewrite badly expressed or outdated code, making it possible, for example, for the AI to ensure software always uses the latest implementation of a programming language.
