Diffblue Receives £1 Million Grant from Innovate UK to Advance AI-Driven Software Engineering

OXFORD, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mar 31, 2025--

Diffblue, creators of the world’s first fully-autonomous AI agent for unit test generation, has received a £1 million grant from Innovate UK as part of ITEA project Generative AI for the Software Development Life Cycle (GENIUS). This funding will accelerate Diffblue’s enhancements to its AI solutions that leverage reinforcement learning to improve efficiency, accuracy, and scalability in software development.

GENIUS is a collaborative international initiative focused on bridging the gap between manual-intensive processes and the untapped potential of generative AI. The project brings together a diverse consortium of industry leaders and research institutions across 11 countries, including Siemens, Fraunhofer, Philips, Vaadin, and Ontario Tech University.

Diffblue, in partnership with King’s College London, British Telecom (BT), GoCodeGreen, and other European collaborators, will leverage the opportunity to develop tools and processes that automate complex software engineering tasks, improve software quality, and accelerate development cycles. Together, they are developing AI algorithms capable of automating testing, code generation, and software maintenance, while also exploring new methods to enhance system performance and reduce errors in the software development lifecycle.

Unlike traditional Large Language Model (LLM)-based tools, Diffblue’s approach to generative AI combines reinforcement learning with code execution to improve accuracy and eliminate hallucinations. By learning from each test it runs against actual code, Diffblue’s flagship product Diffblue Cover can refine outputs to generate high quality unit tests, all of which are guaranteed to compile and pass while automatically delivering high levels of coverage and test strength.

"We are excited to receive this grant from Innovate UK and to work with our partners on the GENIUS project,” Peter Schrammel, CTO and co-founder of Diffblue. “AI is rapidly changing the way software is developed, and at Diffblue, we are channeling this shift to bring scalable development solutions to enterprises so they can innovate with greater speed and confidence."

This grant marks a significant step forward in the ongoing effort to harness the power of AI for software engineering, creating new opportunities for businesses to scale and engineering teams to focus on what truly matters: innovation.

For more information about the GENIUS project and its partners, visit itea4.org/project/genius.html.

To learn more about Diffblue, visit diffblue.com.

About Diffblue

Founded by researchers from the University of Oxford, Diffblue uses game-changing AI technology to fundamentally transform the way developers write code. An early pioneer of generative AI, Diffblue leverages reinforcement learning to automate tedious and error-prone parts of the SDLC (software development lifecycle) with trusted results. Capable of writing unit tests 250x faster than a human developer, Diffblue Cover autonomously helps software teams improve code quality, expand test coverage and increase productivity so they can ship software faster, more frequently, with fewer defects. Diffblue’s customers include Citi, ING, Workday, S&P Global, ING, and BNY.

About ITEA

ITEA is the Eureka Cluster for software innovation, enabling a large international community to collaborate in funded projects that turn innovative ideas into new businesses, jobs, economic growth and benefits for society.

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