Gitar raises $9 million to automate code validation

Two-year-old startup Gitar emerged from stealth on Wednesday with $9 million in funding led by Venrock, with participation from Sierra Ventures. Founded by Ali-Reza Adl-Tabatabai—a veteran of Intel Labs, Google, and Uber—the company has developed a platform that uses AI agents to perform code-quality operations. These tasks include conducting code reviews and managing continuous integration workflows, which is the automated process of regularly merging and testing code changes to keep a codebase stable and up to date.

The company is positioning its technology to address “code overload,” a challenge resulting from the rapid adoption of AI-driven coding practices. While AI tools have accelerated code generation, they can also introduce bugs and quality issues into enterprise codebases. Adl-Tabatabai noted that while most of the market has focused on code generation, Gitar is built specifically to address the workflow that occurs after code is written. The platform aims to shift the focus from writing code to validating it, ensuring that what is built is ready for production.

Gitar sells subscription access to its platform, which allows engineering teams to deploy AI agents for security and maintenance operations. The platform also gives teams the ability to create their own custom agents to orchestrate tests, diagnostics, and reviews. Adl-Tabatabai argues that while generation produces code, validation is what makes it trustworthy. He describes Gitar as a workflow agent designed to own this process by orchestrating reviews, tests, and diagnostics from end to end. Under this model, he envisions a future where human code reviews will become a minimal part of the software development process, with automated systems handling the bulk of the validation work.

“We have a validation agent that can automatically ensure that your code is safe to ship, and involves humans only in exception cases,” said Adl-Tabatabai, CEO of Gitar. The startup plans to use the new funding to hire across its engineering and product teams as it continues to develop systems capable of providing its services at scale.

Why it matters

As AI-generated code floods enterprise environments, the bottleneck shifts from writing code to validating it. Gitar is betting that automated agents, rather than humans, will become the primary gatekeepers of software quality.