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Exclusive: AI software testing startup Synthesized receives $20 million Series A venture round

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Synthesized, a London- and New York-based startup that uses artificial intelligence to automate software testing, has raised $20 million in new venture capital funding, as demand for quality assurance tools surges across the tech industry.

The Series A funding round was led by Redalpine Venture Partners, with participation from IQ Capital, Mercia Ventures, UBS and Seedcamp. Deutsche Bank, which previously invested in the company and is also a customer of Synthesized, invested in the new funding round as well.

The company did not disclose its valuation following the funding round. 

Synthesized hopes to take advantage of a surging demand for software quality assurance, its founder and CEO Nicolai Baldin told Fortune. With the increasing popularity of “vibe coding”—using AI to write computer software simply from a description of what the software should do–as well as AI-powered coding assistants that provide suggestions to human coders, testing the resulting code to ensure that it works well and doesn’t introduce cybersecurity vulnerabilities is more important than ever.

“We are making sure we really identify those things which are going to break your app, at the data level, on the environment level, and help you expose those breakage points,” Baldin said. “This is absolutely critical because those traditional [testing] coordinators, they don’t do that.”

The need for this kind of testing is growing rapidly. Spending on automated software evaluation tools is expected to reach $10.6 billion by 2033, up from $1.9 billion in 2023, according to a market research report from Market.us.

“Synthesized is tackling one of the most urgent and overlooked challenges in the age of AI: how to test, validate, and trust what we build,” Daniel Graf, General Partner at Redalpine, said in a statement. “Their platform doesn’t just generate high-quality test data—it lays the foundation for a new class of autonomous QA agents that will transform how modern software is verified and shipped.”

Baldin founded Synthesized in 2020 after completing a PhD. in machine learning and statistics from the University of Cambridge. Initially, the company focused on automated testing of machine learning algorithms to find the edge cases on which these AI models would fail. The company also developed tools for assessing the bias in machine learning models. But the company has now moved into the testing of traditional kinds of rule-based software too.

Baldin said the company has focused on what he calls the most complex parts of the testing process, which he said was creating realistic data and environments for assessing enterprise software.

Surveys of developers have consistently found that waiting for quality assurance testing leads to significant bottlenecks in software development. A 2023 study by consulting firm CapGemini’s technology services arm Sogeti found that 80% of software delays are the result of delays in setting up and running assurance tests, while a 2022 Forrester Research report found that 40% of quality assurance budgets are lost to manual test data management.

Synthesized is able to speed these processes up significantly. The company says that by using its software Deutsche Bank has cut in half the time it takes to find test data for its software evaluations and that other customers have seen their QA costs reduced by 40%. 

The startup’s testing software works on a customer’s own cloud or on-premesis servers, reducing security and data privacy concerns. “You don’t need to transfer code to us,” Baldin said.

Synthesized is hardly the only company trying to apply AI methods to software testing. The space is increasingly crowded, with other startups such as TestFort, QASolve, Ranger, Quash, Zencoder, and a clutch of other new entrants competing for marketshare against traditional software testing services from the likes of IBM, Micro Focus (now part of Open Text), and Perforce Software.

Baldin says that Synthesized will use the new funding to double the size of its expansion across North America and Europe, with plans to double its 35-person team over the next year. The company currently operates offices in London and New York, with virtual operations in Japan.

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National Park Service drops free admission on MLK Day and Juneteenth while adding Trump’s birthday

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The National Park Service will offer free admission to U.S. residents on President Donald Trump’s birthday next year — which also happens to be Flag Day — but is eliminating the benefit for Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth.

The new list of free admission days for Americans is the latest example of the Trump administration downplaying America’s civil rights history while also promoting the president’s image, name and legacy.

Last year, the list of free days included Martin Luther King Jr Day and Juneteenth — which is June 19 — but not June 14, Trump’s birthday.

The new free-admission policy takes effect Jan. 1 and was one of several changes announced by the Park Service late last month, including higher admission fees for international visitors.

The other days of free park admission in 2026 are Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Constitution Day, Veterans Day, President Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday (Oct. 27) and the anniversary of the creation of the Park Service (Aug. 25).

Eliminating Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth, which commemorates the day in 1865 when the last enslaved Americans were emancipated, removes two of the nation’s most prominent civil rights holidays.

Some civil rights leaders voiced opposition to the change after news about it began spreading over the weekend.

“The raw & rank racism here stinks to high heaven,” Harvard Kennedy School professor Cornell William Brooks, a former president of the NAACP, wrote on social media about the new policy.

Kristen Brengel, a spokesperson for the National Parks Conservation Association, said that while presidential administrations have tweaked the free days in the past, the elimination of Martin Luther King Jr. Day is particularly concerning. For one, the day has become a popular day of service for community groups that use the free day to perform volunteer projects at parks.

That will now be much more expensive, said Brengel, whose organization is a nonprofit that advocates for the park system.

“Not only does it recognize an American hero, it’s also a day when people go into parks to clean them up,” Brengel said. “Martin Luther King Jr. deserves a day of recognition … For some reason, Black history has repeatedly been targeted by this administration, and it shouldn’t be.”

Some Democratic lawmakers also weighed in to object to the new policy.

“The President didn’t just add his own birthday to the list, he removed both of these holidays that mark Black Americans’ struggle for civil rights and freedom,” said Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada. “Our country deserves better.”

A spokesperson for the National Park Service did not immediately respond to questions on Saturday seeking information about the reasons behind the changes.

Since taking office, Trump has sought to eliminate programs seen as promoting diversity across the federal government, actions that have erased or downplayed America’s history of racism as well as the civil rights victories of Black Americans.

Self-promotion is an old habit of the president’s and one he has continued in his second term. He unsuccessfully put himself forwardfor the Nobel Peace Prize, renamed the U.S. Institute of Peace after himself, sought to put his name on the planned NFL stadium in the nation’s capital and had a new children’s savings program named after him.

Some Republican lawmakers have suggested putting his visage on Mount Rushmore and the $100 bill.



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JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon says Europe has a ‘real problem’

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JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon called out slow bureaucracy in Europe in a warning that a “weak” continent poses a major economic risk to the US.

“Europe has a real problem,” Dimon said Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum. “They do some wonderful things on their safety nets. But they’ve driven business out, they’ve driven investment out, they’ve driven innovation out. It’s kind of coming back.”

While he praised some European leaders who he said were aware of the issues, he cautioned politics is “really hard.” 

Dimon, leader of the biggest US bank, has long said that the risk of a fragmented Europe is among the major challenges facing the world. In his letter to shareholders released earlier this year, he said that Europe has “some serious issues to fix.”

On Saturday, he praised the creation of the euro and Europe’s push for peace. But he warned that a reduction in military efforts and challenges trying to reach agreement within the European Union are threatening the continent.

“If they fragment, then you can say that America first will not be around anymore,” Dimon said. “It will hurt us more than anybody else because they are a major ally in every single way, including common values, which are really important.”

He said the US should help.

“We need a long-term strategy to help them become strong,” Dimon said. “A weak Europe is bad for us.”

The administration of President Donald Trump issued a new national security strategy that directed US interests toward the Western Hemisphere and protection of the homeland while dismissing Europe as a continent headed toward “civilizational erasure.”

Read More: Trump’s National Security Strategy Veers Inward in Telling Shift

JPMorgan has been ramping up its push to spur more investments in the national defense sector. In October, the bank announced that it would funnel $1.5 trillion into industries that bolster US economic security and resiliency over the next 10 years — as much as $500 billion more than what it would’ve provided anyway. 

Dimon said in the statement that it’s “painfully clear that the United States has allowed itself to become too reliant on unreliable sources of critical minerals, products and manufacturing.”

Investment banker Jay Horine oversees the effort, which Dimon called “100% commercial.” It will focus on four areas: supply chain and advanced manufacturing; defense and aerospace; energy independence and resilience; and frontier and strategic technologies. 

The bank will also invest as much as $10 billion of its own capital to help certain companies expand, innovate or accelerate strategic manufacturing.

Separately on Saturday, Dimon praised Trump for finding ways to roll back bureaucracy in the government.

“There is no question that this administration is trying to bring an axe to some of the bureaucracy that held back America,” Dimon said. “That is a good thing and we can do it and still keep the world safe, for safe food and safe banks and all the stuff like that.”



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Hegseth likens strikes on alleged drug boats to post-9/11 war on terror

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth defended strikes on alleged drug cartel boats during remarks Saturday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, saying President Donald Trump has the power to take military action “as he sees fit” to defend the nation.

Hegseth dismissed criticism of the strikes, which have killed more than 80 people and now face intense scrutiny over concerns that they violated international law. Saying the strikes are justified to protect Americans, Hegseth likened the fight to the war on terror following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

“If you’re working for a designated terrorist organization and you bring drugs to this country in a boat, we will find you and we will sink you. Let there be no doubt about it,” Hegseth said during his keynote address at the Reagan National Defense Forum. “President Trump can and will take decisive military action as he sees fit to defend our nation’s interests. Let no country on earth doubt that for a moment.”

The most recent strike brings the death toll of the campaign to at least 87 people. Lawmakers have sought more answers about the attacks and their legal justification, and whether U.S. forces were ordered to launch a follow-up strike following a September attack even after the Pentagon knew of survivors.

Though Hegseth compared the alleged drug smugglers to Al-Qaida terrorists, experts have noted significant differences between the two foes and the efforts to combat them.

Hegseth’s remarks came after the Trump administration released its new national security strategy, one that paints European allies as weak and aims to reassert America’s dominance in the Western Hemisphere.

During the speech, Hegseth also discussed the need to check China’s rise through strength instead of conflict. He repeated Trump’s vow to resume nuclear testing on an equal basis as China and Russia — a goal that has alarmed many nuclear arms experts. China and Russia haven’t conducted explosive tests in decades, though the Kremlin said it would follow the U.S. if Trump restarted tests.

The speech was delivered at the Reagan National Defense Forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute in California, an event which brings together top national security experts from around the country. Hegseth used the visit to argue that Trump is Reagan’s “true and rightful heir” when it comes to muscular foreign policy.

By contrast, Hegseth criticized Republican leaders in the years since Reagan for supporting wars in the Middle East and democracy-building efforts that didn’t work. He also blasted those who have argued that climate change poses serious challenges to military readiness.

“The war department will not be distracted by democracy building, interventionism, undefined wars, regime change, climate change, woke moralizing and feckless nation building,” he said.



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