- Helsinki startup Avrea has raised $4.7 million to build a faster way to test and ship software in the age of AI-generated code.
- The round was led by Earlybird and closed in a few weeks without an initial pitch deck.
- For others looking to win over investors, the co-founders stress the importance of clear messaging, an understanding of how their market will evolve, and why their product will be the winner.
Helsinki startup Avrea has raised $4.7 million in pre-seed funding led by Earlybird as it emerges from stealth with an AI platform for deploying software more quickly.
The rise of AI coding tools like GitHub Copilot, Cursor and Claude Code means that software is being developed faster than ever. However, quality control has not moved at the same speed and code is being deployed with security vulnerabilities. Testing, thus, has become a bottleneck in shipping software.
Founded in 2025, Avrea has built software that plugs into existing deployment platforms to give engineering teams better visibility into what is slowing them down — for example, low-quality testing, reasons builds get stuck, and other resource bottlenecks — so developers spend less time waiting for testing and more time shipping code. The startup uses AI agents to automatically spot these problems.
It is the brain child of Aiven co-founder Hannu Valtonen and Nosto co-founder Juha Valvanne, and the wider 10-person team draws from Spotify and Hoxhunt.
GitHub and GitLab — built in the late 2000s — are the company’s largest competitors. The shift to AI generated code means how software is tested needs to change too. Investors see the opportunity; the co-founders say they received multiple term sheets and ran the fundraising process in a few weeks.
They didn’t need a pitch deck, either, instead opting for “direct conversations and deeper discussions” to ensure that the startup’s first investors understood and shared their long-term vision.
“That said, as the process progressed, we naturally prepared a comprehensive data room and a detailed management presentation for the later stages of diligence and investment committee discussions,” Valtonen and Valvanne tell Tech Funding News, adding that by that stage the core vision and strategy were already aligned.
For them, it was important to bring on investors who knew what it takes to build and scale a company like theirs globally, from the product to the team and go-to-market strategy.
“We also paid close attention to each VC’s existing portfolio and spoke with founders they had previously backed. Ultimately, reputation, track record, and alignment on vision were all key factors in selecting our investors,” they say.
The startup, which is around six months old, would not disclose its valuation or specific terms of the round.
When asked about its revenue structure, the founders tellTFN it is currently pre-revenue.
Lessons from previous startups
As repeat founders, Valtonen and Valvanne say that they understood their own company and business better, which helped guide them in knowing how much money to raise and the type of investor they wanted to raise from.
Many of the investors that cut the startup a cheque were also already in their network. Valtonen’s previous company Aiven had backing from Earlybird, for instance.
“Backing Hannu a second time was an easy decision. At Aiven, he built a category-defining infrastructure company and scaled it to unicorn status,” says Earlybird general partner Paul Klemm says.
“But what makes Avrea especially compelling is the opportunity: AI is driving an explosion in code, and the systems that test and ship software are quickly becoming the bottleneck. With Juha and a team deeply experienced in building for developers, Avrea is uniquely positioned to define the future of software delivery.”
The fresh funds will be used to scale the engineering team, expand the platform, and accelerate go-to-market. The co-founders say that they consider diversity as a key driver of ideas, stronger teams, and better products as they intend to build a “highly international and diverse team.”
Avrea will first focus on the European market first, given its strong engineering culture, growing AI ecosystem, and increasing focus on developer productivity, per the co-founders.
For other founders, Valtonen and Valvanne stress the importance of clearly articulating the problem mission, how they see the market evolving, and why their product is positioned to win.
“Investors also want to understand your go-to-market strategy, how you plan to build the initial team, and how you will scale the organisation over time. Clarity of vision and execution matters more than ever in today’s market,” they add.
