Qodo raises $70M to verify AI-generated code as enterprises struggle with trust and quality

Qodo raises $70M for code verification as AI coding scales | TechCrunch

As AI coding tools generate billions of lines of code each month, a new bottleneck is emerging: ensuring that software works as intended. Qodo, a startup building AI agents for code review, testing and governance, is betting that verification will define the next phase of software development. The New York-headquartered startup has raised a $70 million Series B round led by Qumra Capital, bringing its total funding to $120 million. Maor Ventures, Phoenix Venture Partners, S Ventures, Square Peg, Susa Ventures, TLV Partners, Vine Ventures, Peter Welender (OpenAI), and Clara Shih (Meta) also joined in the round. Qodo is aiming to serve as a layer focused on improving trust in AI-generated code as enterprises accelerate adoption of tools like OpenClaw and Claude Code. Many are discovering that faster code output doesn't necessarily translate into reliable or secure software. While most AI review tools focus on what changed, Qodo focuses on how code changes affect entire systems, factoring in organizational standards, historical context, and risk tolerance to help companies better manage AI-generated code more confidently. Itamar Friedman, who previously co-founded Visualead and led the machine vision business at Alibaba (which acquired Visualead), founded Qodo in 2022. He told TechCrunch that two key moments in his career -- his time at Mellanox, which was later acquired by Nvidia, and building Visualead -- inspired him to start Qodo, just months before the launch of ChatGPT. At Mellanox, where he worked on automating hardware verification using machine learning, he realized that "generating systems and verifying systems require very different approaches (different tools, different thinking)." Later, at Alibaba's Damo Academy, he saw AI evolve toward systems capable of reasoning over human language. By 2021-2022, just ahead of GPT-3.5, it became clear to him that AI would generate a large share of the world's content -- especially code -- reinforcing his view that code generation and verification would require fundamentally different systems. A recent survey shows that while 95% of developers don't fully trust AI-generated code, only 48% consistently review it before committing, highlighting a gap between awareness and practice. "Code generation companies are largely built around LLMs. But for code quality and governance, LLMs alone aren't enough," Friedman said. "Quality is subjective. It depends on organizational standards, past decisions, and tribal knowledge. An LLM can't fully understand that context. It's like taking a great engineer from one company and asking them to review code at another -- they lack the internal context." Companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic are helping shape the broader AI narrative, including in adjacent areas like code review, but they are largely focused on building features rather than end-to-end solutions, Friedman explained. Although there are other startups in the space, many remain early stage and have yet to see widespread enterprise adoption, the CEO noted. Qodo is leaning into performance to stand out in a crowded market. The startup recently ranked No. 1 on Martian's Code Review Bench, scoring 64.3% -- more than 10 points ahead of the next competitor and 25 points ahead of Claude Code Review. The benchmark highlights its ability to catch tricky logic bugs and cross-file issues without overwhelming developers with noise. In the past month, it has launched Qodo 2.0, a multi-agent code review system now leading current benchmarks, and introduced tools that learn each organization's definition of code quality. The company is already working with major enterprises such as NVIDIA, Walmart, Red Hat, Intuit and Texas Instruments, as well as high-growth firms like Monday.com and JFrog. "Every year has had a defining moment -- from Copilot to ChatGPT to full task automation," Friedman said. "Now we're entering a new phase: moving from stateless AI to stateful systems -- from intelligence to 'artificial wisdom.' That's what Qodo is built for."

AI-generated code verification startup Qodo raises $70M - SiliconANGLE

Few areas have felt the impact of generative artificial intelligence as much as software development. Tools such as Anthropic PBC's Claude Code and OpenAI Group PBC's Codex have dramatically accelerated code creation, but that speed comes with a tradeoff: namely, the need to verify that code. Qodo believes code generation is no longer the bottleneck in code development. Rather, trust has become the new logjam. Traditionally, code verification has always been done by humans, but they're simply unable to keep up with the immense volumes of AI-generated code being produced by enterprises today. But it's not just volume that's causing problems. Engineering teams tend to treat AI-generated code differently, Qodo says. They're much more wary of bugs and things slipping through the net, and so they apply more rigorous validation steps before that code is deployed. The result is that code is being generated by AI much faster than it can be shipped. This is where Qodo comes to the rescue. It's not another coding assistant, but instead acts as a dedicated code review and governance layer that slots into the software development lifecycle. The company integrates its software within development environments, pull requests and continuous integration/continuous development pipelines, where it applies automated, context-aware analysis to every line of code. Whereas traditional verification tools focus on isolated differences, Qodo tries to evaluate how changes to the code ripple across the entire codebase, taking into account any architectural dependencies and historical decisions. To do this, Qodo relies on a multiagent architecture, with specialized AI agents that handle each aspect of the code review process, including bug detection, compliance checks and architectural validation. There's also a coordinating layer that filters and prioritizes the findings of these agents. It reflects a broader change in AI systems, where multiple specialized agents orchestrated as teams have proven themselves more effective than a single, all-powerful model that tries to do everything. Qodo's raise hints at a change of focus in the AI coding industry. Over the last couple of years, most of the major players have focused specifically on code generation, building copilots, autocomplete systems and even full-fledged AI developers that can create entire applications from scratch. But Qodo wants to put more emphasis on code governance at a time when enterprises are beginning to realize that ramping up productivity alone won't accelerate software development. Without strong guardrails, AI-generated code is simply too risky to be deployed without sitting in a queue until after it has been reviewed for vulnerabilities, logic errors and consistency issues. Of course, Qodo isn't the only AI code review tool in town. It faces competition from rivals including Greptile, Augment and Devin, as well as Anthropic's newly released Claude Code Review. But the company has an edge over its rivals in terms of performance. It was recently ranked number one on Martian's Code Review Bench with a 64.3% score. That's one of the industry's most popular benchmarks for assessing AI code review tools, and highlights Qodo's strong ability to find the trickiest logic bugs and cross-file issues without creating too many false positives. Qodo has also won the confidence of major enterprises such as Nvidia Corp., Walmart Inc., Red Hat Inc., Intuit Inc., JFrog Ltd. and Texas Instruments Inc. Today's round was led by Qumra Capital and saw participation from Maor Ventures, Phoenix Capital Partners, S Ventures, Square Peg, Susa Ventures, TLV Partners, Vine Ventures and others. The funding will help Qodo to scale its operations globally, it said, by expanding its product and engineering teams and developing additional AI-powered governance capabilities. Its goal is to allow companies to confidently adopt AI coding tools at scale while maintaining rigorous standards for code quality. Co-founder and Chief Executive Itamar Friedman said the days of unverified AI software development will soon be a thing of the past. "We're building a system of record for code quality and trust as enterprises shift from experimental AI to mission-critical automation," he said. "With this new financing we can empower organizations to move fast with confidence, knowing every line of code is safe, reliable and aligned with their standards."