Empirik Raises $21M to Use AI for Predicting Infrastructure Failures

Empirik, a startup founded by two former Sequoia Capital technology leaders, has closed a $21 million seed round to commercialize an AI-powered system that detects infrastructure vulnerabilities and prevents outages before they disrupt services.

The Problem It Solves#

Companies traditionally react to infrastructure failures only after systems go down—a costly and disruptive approach. Empirik instead uses artificial intelligence to monitor system changes across an organization's entire tech stack and model how modifications in one area might cascade through interconnected systems, surfacing risks before they cause problems.

From Sequoia Incubation to Independent Venture#

The company emerged from Sequoia Capital's internal incubation program. Avon Puri, who spent over a decade managing infrastructure at Rubrik and VMware before joining Sequoia in 2020, partnered with fellow Sequoia technologist Sudheer Dhurjati to develop the concept. Recognizing the timing as AI capabilities matured, they built a product to automate infrastructure risk prediction.

Sequoia recruited Kartik Chandrayana—formerly CPO at Quantum Metric and observability VP at Salesforce—as CEO to scale the operation. The funding comes from Sequoia, Canapi, and Alumni Ventures.

How It Works#

Empirik functions as what Sequoia partner Bogomil Balkansky describes as an autonomous "traffic cop" for infrastructure. The system:

• Permits low-risk configuration changes automatically
• Applies guardrails to moderate changes
• Escalates the most dangerous updates for human review

This approach lets DevOps and site reliability engineering teams delegate routine oversight to AI, freeing them to concentrate on strategic work rather than constant firefighting.

Early Traction#

Despite launching only recently, Empirik counts startups and several Fortune 500 clients including S&P Global, Guardant Health, and a major consumer packaged goods firm among its users—a signal of confidence in its ability to protect mission-critical systems.