DEVOPSdigest

LaunchDarkly announced the acquisition of Highlight, a powerful, open source, full-stack application monitoring platform known for its error monitoring, logging, distributed tracing and session replay capabilities.

As engineering teams demand more control over risk and reliability, LaunchDarkly is doubling down on observability to make Guarded Releases the new industry standard.

"Guarded Releases represent the next evolution in software deployment, ensuring that new features are delivered safely and effectively," said Dan Rogers, CEO of LaunchDarkly. "By integrating Highlight’s robust observability tools, we can equip teams with real-time insights to deploy features confidently, reducing risk while accelerating innovation."

Guarded Releases, a concept introduced by LaunchDarkly, allow development teams to deploy incrementally and monitor impact, helping to minimize risk while gathering critical performance insights. With Highlight, LaunchDarkly is expanding its ability to provide deeper visibility into software behavior at every stage of the release process through real-time error monitoring and session replays.

Highlight’s observability platform provides:

- Error Monitoring – Real-time detection, tracking, and alerting on application errors, enabling engineering to pinpoint issues instantly, reducing downtime and improving system stability before customers even notice a problem.

- Logging – High-speed, scalable log analysis designed for comprehensive observability.

- Traces – End-to-end performance insights across distributed systems, providing visibility into dependencies, latencies, and bottlenecks.

- Session Replay – High-fidelity, pixel-perfect video replays of user interactions, allowing developers to diagnose issues with full visual and contextual data.

The acquisition of Highlight follows the company’s recent acquisition of Houseware, a leader in warehouse-native experimentation and product analytics. With Houseware, LaunchDarkly expanded its ability to help teams optimize digital experiences using first-party data. Now, with Highlight, the company is extending that precision to observability and real-time release intelligence. These acquisitions reinforce the commitment LaunchDarkly has to making experimentation, analytics, and observability integral to modern software delivery.

Highlight has built a strong developer community and contributed to the evolution of modern monitoring and debugging tools. As an open-source-friendly company, LaunchDarkly shares this philosophy, offering open-source SDKs and a commitment to community contributions. Together, LaunchDarkly and Highlight will continue championing developer-friendly observability solutions— driving transparency, flexibility, and collaboration for engineering teams worldwide.

As part of the acquisition, Highlight’s team, including co-founders Jay Khatri and Vadim Korolik, will be joining LaunchDarkly. Their expertise in observability and scalable infrastructure will accelerate innovation within the LaunchDarkly platform. Their experience will be invaluable as LaunchDarkly continues redefining modern software delivery—enabling teams to ship faster, safer, and with full confidence.