Autonoma AI helps companies prevent bugs without sacrificing speed on AWS

Modern application development is a delicate balancing act. Software teams must contend with growing volumes of code, shorter release cycles, and higher customer expectations. Rapid iteration cannot come at the expense of quality assurance, but it’s becoming harder for businesses to sustain both speed of delivery and consistency of output. Optimizing and testing software across an increasingly diverse set of mobile platforms requires significant resources that few teams can spare; and the more stretched they become, the more likely errors are to slip through the net. This is where artificial intelligence (AI) can deliver immense value, empowering under-pressure teams with time-saving automation.

Together with AWS, Autonoma AI is doing exactly that, revolutionizing mobile and web app testing with an AI-powered, no-code platform that eliminates the need for manual quality assurance or complex automation frameworks. Thanks to AWS Device Farm, Autonoma customers can rigorously test their products on the devices, platforms, and operating systems their own customers use, at scale, and without the need to manage costly hardware.

Accelerating software release cycles without sacrificing quality

Founded in 2022, Autonoma provides elastic, enterprise-grade infrastructure to execute thousands of parallel tests with zero setup or maintenance. “While tech native companies can streamline their software development lifecycle and move very fast, that isn’t the case for the vast majority of businesses,” says Eugenio Scafati, CEO. “The biggest bottleneck is usually quality assurance, where manual testing introduces a lot of inefficiencies.” Those inefficiencies are likely to worsen as code-producing AI agents become more commonplace.

“What we propose is a different approach,” says Scafati. “With our framework, you don’t have to be technical to test like a very proficient QA engineer. You can simply tell Autonoma about your application and it will generate your test cases for you.” This helps enterprises reduce testing time from days to minutes, accelerating release cycles by an entire quarter—all while improving product quality and customer experience. “It's incredible to see how our customers can rapidly ship software with very small teams,” says Scafati.

Limitless scalability meets reliable security

The company chose to build its solution on AWS so that they could match the scalability enterprise customers require. “What we are trying to do is remove friction for our customers,” says Simon Mullen, VP of Engineering. “For that purpose, we need scalability, and that’s what drove us to migrate to AWS. We’re also in the process of getting our SOC 2 certification and rely a lot on having the security foundation that AWS provides as well.”

Crucially, AWS gives Autonoma access to three key platforms for testing: web applications, Android mobile applications, and iOS mobile applications. “AWS was the only cloud provider that enables us to host all three,” says Mullen. “To deploy iOS infrastructure, we need Mac instances and AWS is only the provider that has that. For Android, we’ve been using AWS Graviton processors—they have a whole ecosystem for SaaS platforms like us.”

Low-cost physical device testing at enterprise scale

At the core of Autonoma’s infrastructure is AWS Device Farm, an application testing service that enables businesses to improve the quality of their web and mobile applications by testing them across an extensive range of desktop browsers and real mobile devices, without having to provision and manage any testing infrastructure. The service allows businesses to concurrently run tests on multiple desktop browsers or real devices to speed up testing and QA. Device Farm also generates videos and logs to help customers quickly identify issues with their application.

“AWS Device Farm gives us the capacity to run testing not only on emulated devices, but also on physical devices for our clients without the need to buy, manage, and maintain those devices ourselves,” says Eugenio Scafati, CEO. The Autonoma team rely on AWS Device Farm to test many different devices, many of the same devices, and many different versions of the same device as needed. Tom Piaggio, CTO, explains: “Traditional testing methods have a very big limitation, which is you can only run a set number of parallel devices. AWS Device Farm doesn’t have that limitation. You can elastically run any number of devices which significantly reduces regression time.”

Alongside AWS Device Farm, Autonoma uses a breadth of other AWS services including Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) and Karpenter. “If someone runs 1,000 tests, we can easily scale with Karpenter and EKS to meet the demands of our clients,” says Mullen. Autonoma also provides customers with recordings and screenshots of tests for review, which are stored using Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).

Iterating at pace with expert support

The collaboration between AWS and Autonoma goes beyond technology. For example, the team took part in AWS Activate, a free program for startups looking to innovate, build, and grow on AWS. Participants can invest AWS Activate credits in infrastructure, data services, and leading AI models. They can also access architectural best practices and expert guidance, helping them go to market faster and lower operational costs. “When we first started with Activate, we thought that we were essentially getting credits to use on AWS,” says Mullen. “But we were quickly connected with a group of experts that really helped us build the foundation that we have today.”

“Once we had that foundation, we took some time to explore AWS ourselves,” says Mullen. The Autonoma team then began to formulate an implementation plan in collaboration with AWS experts. “There was a lot of back and forth over Slack as we determined how to achieve our short- and long-term objectives. That collaboration with AWS really helped us mature our platform at speed,” says Mullen. “Programs like this really support startups in overcoming roadblocks that would otherwise take significant time to resolve. Knowing AWS has your back in those moments is really valuable.”

Simplified procurement. Expanded reach.

On the commercial side, Autonoma is listed on AWS Marketplace, improving product reach and exposure, as well as streamlining procurement for customers. “A lot of companies are already AWS customers, so we don’t have to go through a whole procurement cycle to start working with them,” says Scafati. “They can pay us directly through AWS Marketplace using budget already assigned for AWS initiatives—all it takes is one click.” Year-long procurement cycles have been reduced to weeks, while pilot and enterprise programs have helped to attract new customers. 

More broadly, AWS has helped Autonoma bolster consumer confidence and win several new customers in the financial sector. “We operate in compliance-heavy industries like banking,” says Mullen. “Having our whole infrastructure in AWS has given us huge leverage on that front. A lot of our customers are also already on AWS themselves, which greatly simplifies the integration of our solution.”

“We speak a lot with AWS account managers,” says Scafati. “We show them our product and then present to their existing customers. It’s an area where our relationship can really grow in go-to-market terms.” He continues: “AWS customers almost always prefer to keep things centralized, so being on AWS ourselves is a big bonus.” In one case, a customer chose Autonoma precisely because it was built using AWS Device Farm. 

Combining automation with context-aware agentic intelligence

Going forward, Autonoma is continuing to collaborate with AWS and enhance its offering with new agentic capabilities. “We recently relocated to San Francisco, where we are building more agentic experiences for bug-prevention,” says Scafati. These experiences combine the efficiency of automation with context-aware intelligence.

“We’re building a product that is suitable for enterprises and startups wanting to move fast and meet ambitious growth targets,” says Scafati. “These companies don’t have time to invest in designing tests, they need something out-of-the-box that can suggest test cases and execute them autonomously, and that’s exactly what we’re delivering.”

“Executing tests under the same conditions in which users engage with your product is critical,” says Scafati. “We offer this out-of-the-box through what we call a smart matrix, adding intelligence based on real user behavior across a range of devices and operating systems.” Autonoma is using Anthropic models on Amazon Bedrock, and working closely with an AWS Partner to bring its vision to life. The company is now actively immersing itself in the agentic software development lifecycle (SDLC) and will continue to shape the future of quality assurance with time-saving, intelligent capabilities.

Like Autonoma, startups around the globe are breaking new ground in their industries with the support of AWS. More than 350,000 disruptors have already accelerated growth on AWS Activate since its inception in 2013. If you want access to Activate Credits, technical resources, and personalized guidance, apply today.