London and Swiss-based deeptech startups merge to support over 1.5 million developers

DeepCode was established in 2016 with the ambition to provide a machine learning-driven platform for automated AI code reviews which alerts developers about critical vulnerabilities. With the increasing dependence on software, the importance of ensuring that software is written in a way that makes it easy to maintain and adapt while being reliable and efficient is equally essential. DeepCode’s platform, which is built on more than a decade of research, helps developers to prevent bugs from going into production by scanning code up to 50x faster than alternatives. DeepCode not only provides the most accurate but also the fastest solution enabling real-time workflows.

Despite the successes of the past years, which include the closing of a CHF 3.92 million, DeepCode would require several years to launch its solution in the market. One of the reasons being that the team had dedicated their skills elsewhere but preparing for commercialisation, according to a blog by Earlybird Venture Capital, which led DeepCode’s investment round last year. The initial partnership discussions with Snyk, therefore quickly revealed more substantial synergies.

DeepCode has now agreed to merge with Snyk, the leader in developer-first cloud-native application security. The deal is expected to close within two months, following satisfaction of customary pre-closing conditions. As a global player in its field, Snyk supports over 1.5 million active user developer community and are primed for commercial distribution, with a total funding of USD 450 million and its recent valuation skyrocketing to USD 2.65 billion. DeepCode’s intelligence will strengthen Synk’s platform by helping to more quickly identify vulnerabilities and ensure developers have a superior level of accuracy.

The acquisition of DeepCode comes on the heels of Snyk’s September 9th announcement of a $200 million Series D investment and valuation of $2.6B. Building on a year of extraordinary growth, including more than 275% revenue growth and 100% employee growth, Snyk will continue its rapid expansion and product innovation with the addition of the DeepCode team and technology.

“Traditional security tools are fatally flawed in today’s fast-paced development environment”, said Peter McKay, CEO of Snyk. “They are too slow for developers to use in their daily work, and they result in too many false positives, often leading to wasted time or overlooked threats. DeepCode’s AI engine brings a level of speed and accuracy to Snyk’s technology platform that will give customers a level of security intelligence they have never had before. Additionally, we now can apply those capabilities to the proprietary code written by developers, extending the Snyk platform’s coverage for securing cloud-native applications.”

"Core to our focus at DeepCode was creating a sophisticated AI platform that blends advanced machine learning algorithms and semantic analysis which makes scanning of code lightning-fast and incredibly accurate," said Boris Paskalev, CEO of DeepCode.  "By leveraging Snyk's security expertise and comprehensive vulnerability database to train our engine, our accuracy will become better even faster, and we can reduce false positives to near-zero.  This provides massive productivity benefits for developers and security teams and overall risk reduction."

 (Press release/RAN)