This week, startup DevAI announced a $6 million seed round of funding to develop agentic AI solutions for IT departments. Emergence Capital, a firm that typically focuses on later-stage funding, led the investment, with additional participation from Pear VC, Base10, and Benchstrength. This follows an earlier $1 million pre-seed investment from Pear VC.
Positioning itself in the massive $2.5 trillion IT software and services market, DevAI tackles inefficiencies in IT infrastructure management. Many IT pros rely on disjointed tools that often contain conflicting information, making them susceptible to errors and security risks. This leads to something commonly called “swivel chair management,” where an IT pro sits in the middle of several consoles and manually correlates information across various systems. This leads to long troubleshooting times and misses information.
A few factoids from my research highlight how big the problem still is. The first is that users report issues 75% of the time, meaning users are generally aware of problems before the IT organization. This puts IT pros in perpetual fire-fighting mode, leading to more errors as engineers feel pressure to get things working as soon as possible, causing them to rush their work. Also, most of the IT time and budget is used to maintain the status quo. DevAI cites 80% in its press release, which is higher than my 71%. Regardless, the fact remains that “keeping the lights on” gobbles up too many resources, leaving a small amount for high-impact activities.
DevAI aims to reduce incident detection and resolution times through its Network Intelligence Engine, which uses AI to connect fragmented IT tools. Instead of relying on separate, disconnected systems, IT teams can analyze data in one place, simplifying network management. The Network Intelligence Engine contains Network AI agents or specialized AI-driven tools that help IT teams. DevAI’s first agent, Neo, can assist with planning, incident response, security, and compliance tasks using a simple chat interface.
Agentic AI has been a hot topic recently, with companies such as NVIDIA, NICE, Cognigy, Five9, and Salesforce rolling out agents to improve workers’ jobs. As a former IT pro, I’ve noticed little focus on the people taking care of the systems that keep the business running. Before the launch, I talked with DevAI co-founder and CEO Susie Wee about this; she told me,
“There are some excellent enterprise-class agentic AI solutions, but they never prioritize the IT use cases. They start with contact centers, customer support, coding, or sales tools, but few vendors focus on the people staying up day and night to keep the systems required to drive the business up and running. Our mission is to close this gap and give IT the tools to be proactive instead of constantly reactive.”
Wee mentioned that DevAI relies heavily on an ecosystem to design its product. It currently has four beta customers from reputable enterprises who provide feedback and data to help design the product. Susie Wee is well versed in this area as her last role was leading Cisco’s developer community, DevNet, which grew from a community of tens of thousands to well over a half million under her watch.
In the press release, DevAI advisor Aryo Kresnadi, Technical Director at FedEx, stated, “As IT leaders, we design and build networks for today and the next 5, 10, and 20 years. Our growing business demands for speed and agility require infusing AI into every aspect of network management—design, planning, and operations. DevAI’s innovative AI solutions address our critical areas that were previously untouched.”
I don’t usually quote from press releases, but his words echo what I’ve heard from many CIOs. AI is being looked at as a tool to run AI better. In response, every technology vendor has built its own AI agent, which doesn’t entirely solve the problem. This still leaves the IT pro interacting with a security agent, Wi-Fi agent, WAN agent, etc. DevAI is working to build a single agent that works across systems. It’s an ambitious undertaking but one that’s needed.
Other founders include cofounder Edwin Zhang, formerly Engineering Director at Google and Sr. Director at Cisco DevNet, and founding team members Ignacio Valenzuela, formerly Software Engineer at Google, Jason Zhou, formerly Software Engineer at Pinterest, and Eric Thiel, another Cisco DevNet veteran. In addition to securing funding, the fresh capital will support scaling efforts, further product development, and deepen customer engagement.
