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.
