Sequoia-incubated Empirik launches with $21M to predict outages before they happen

Empirik emerged as an independent enterprise after securing $21 million in seed funding led by Sequoia, with participation from Canapi and Alumni Ventures. Originally conceived three years ago by Avon Puri and Sudheer Dhurjati, the platform was created to shift IT infrastructure management from reactive troubleshooting to proactive failure prediction. Sequoia incubated the venture in 2023 before bringing on former Quantum Metric CPO Kartik Chandrayana as chief executive officer to guide its official launch.

The platform functions as an autonomous "traffic cop" that tracks modifications across expansive digital systems to infer potential ripple effects. It allows routine updates to pass automatically while placing guardrails on broader modifications and sending high-risk changes to human managers for inspection. By handling these operational checks, Empirik lets site reliability engineers delegate repetitive troubleshooting and maintain focus on higher-value priorities.

Since launching earlier this year, Empirik has already onboarded enterprise customers such as S&P Global, Guardant Health, and a prominent consumer packaged goods business. Sequoia partner Bogomil Balkansky noted that existing observability systems often struggle with intricate system dependencies, whereas Empirik provides dedicated tracking across large environments to help engineering teams prevent critical failures. Empirik raised $21 million in seed capital from Sequoia, Canapi, and Alumni Ventures to predict IT outages.