DEVOPSdigest

SmartBear announced the acquisition of Reflect, an AI-powered no-code testing platform for web applications.

Reflect allows developers and testers to write tests faster as text prompts, enabling greater automation.

This acquisition accelerates SmartBear's AI strategy to meet diverse customer needs by intelligently powering its three integrated hubs for the industry’s most comprehensive API development, testing, and production readiness with insights that power great user experiences across the entire software development lifecycle. Prior to the acquisition, Reflect was backed by Battery Ventures, Craft Ventures, and Y Combinator.

"As companies increasingly look to the impact of GenAI, SmartBear is taking a unique and intentional approach to delivering real value for our customers with our products that have been loved and trusted for years," said SmartBear CEO, Frank Roe. "With Reflect, we gain immediate cutting-edge technology that will enable us to powerfully enhance our hub strategy today with new intelligent capabilities and continue to modernize our solutions going forward. This acquisition anchors our strategy as we enter a new era of leveraging GenAI to transform how our customers build, test, and release great software."

Reflect’s AI-based testing solutions bring new possibilities today, like natural language test creation and visual insight generation. By combining this technology with SmartBear's own recent innovations in AI test automation, the potential is tremendous. SmartBear is committed to steadily enhancing its solutions by leveraging AI in ways that create simplified, scalable testing for modern development teams. Reflect applies large language models to instantly turn natural language test step definitions, like those used in manual test cases, into automated scripts, boosting efficiency.

“This marks a major milestone in Reflect’s nearly five-year journey," said Todd McNeal co-founder of Reflect. “We are confident that by joining forces with SmartBear, we will accelerate innovation and achieve so much more in our mission to make testing easier, faster, and more effective through intelligence. We look forward to this new chapter and are eager to see how, together with SmartBear, we will shape the future of the software development lifecycle.”

This acquisition continues SmartBear's effort to extend its testing platform and improve visibility. It recently announced integrating VisualTest, its AI-driven automated regression visual testing tool, with UI test automation tool, TestComplete.

“We are witnessing the emergence of more sustainable fusions of AI-assisted test generation and automation that go far beyond simply putting a chat interface in front of a testing tool,” said Jason English, Director and Principal Analyst, Intellyx. “A natural language interface designed with declarative, intent-based testing in mind allows test and development teams to achieve higher test resiliency and regression test coverage, as the machine learning model will gain additional user context over time.”