Middleware Lab Inc., the creator of an artificial intelligence-powered observability platform for applications and the infrastructure they run on, said today it has closed on a $6.5 million seed funding round.

The round was led by 8VC and joined by Fin Capital, Vercel Inc. founder and Chief Executive Guillermo Rauch and Tokyo Black. Others, including Decent Capital, Begin Capital, Beat Venture and Gokul Rajaram, also participated in the round.

Middleware has built what it says is a disruptive and powerful, AI-based cloud observability platform that’s specifically designed to monitor modern software applications. The vast majority of today’s applications are based on newer technologies such as Kubernetes, microservices and distributed systems, making it more difficult for enterprises to understand their behavior.

Legacy monitoring tools will no longer do, the company says. The answer, according to Middleware, is an automated observability platform that’s able to monitor this distributed architecture in real-time and enable deep-dive tracking.

According to Middleware Chief Executive Laduram Vishnoi, the startup’s observability platform differs from more established products such as New Relic and Splunk because it’s based on an AI agent that’s capable of detecting errors from logs, traces and browsers, plus configuration mistakes. It’s designed specifically to monitor modern application stacks, he added. “We provide real-time solutions within the platform,” he explained.

Vishnoi explained that Middleware’s cloud observability platform works by amalgamating data from various sources, using machine learning algorithms to identify patterns and anomalies that could indicate performance issues or other problems. It simplifies observability operations too, and offers AI-driven recommendations for possible resolutions, and can implement these automatically, he said.

Another big problem Middleware tackles is the huge expense of most established observability platforms. “Companies are burned with crazy prices, so we have built a solution that can scale without costs going through the roof,” Vishnoi said.

Tokyo Black’s founding partner Keenan Rice said he was especially taken by Middleware’s ability to monitor generative AI-based applications such as ChatGPT. “Generative AI represents a revolutionary technological shift that will completely change the software development, monitoring and maintenance process,” he said. “Middleware’s ChatGPT-based AI advisors make precise recommendations, providing additional investigative paths to the problem. It empowers engineers to tackle increasingly intricate problems with ease.”

Ultimately, Middleware says its objective is to provide development and operations teams with easier access to observability data throughout the software development lifecycle in order to reduce mean time to detection and mean time to resolution.

Looking forward, Middleware said it will use the funds from today’s round to expand its team, grow its customer base and create new features for its platform, including a more advanced “AI adviser” that leverages generative AI.

Image: Middleware