Sequoia-Incubated Empirik Launches with $21M to Predict Outages Before They Happen

Empirik, a Sequoia-incubated startup, has launched with $21 million in seed funding to build an AI-powered observability platform that predicts outages before they happen, rather than simply detecting them after the fact.

Empirik has emerged from stealth with $21 million in seed funding to tackle one of the most persistent problems in modern infrastructure: predicting outages before they occur, rather than responding to them after the fact. The startup's platform uses AI to analyse system behaviour and automatically issue "actionable warnings" when it detects patterns that have preceded past failures.

"It's actually predicting outages. We have a view inside the systems that nobody else has," said Empirik CEO Glenn Solomon.

A Sequoia-Incubated Startup

The company was incubated within Sequoia Capital for nine months and emerged in July 2026. The $21 million seed round was led by Sequoia, with participation from GV (Google Ventures) and Elad Gil, a well-known Silicon Valley angel investor and founder of AI startup MatX . The company was valued at $70 million post-money in the seed round.

How Empirik Works

Empirik's platform uses machine learning to analyse time-series data, logs, and event streams across complex infrastructure, detecting patterns and correlations that indicate an outage risk. The product presents its findings through a dashboard, enabling engineers to see how systems are expected to behave in the future "what the system is likely to do," according to CEO Glenn Solomon.

"The objective is to help people run a service that doesn't have outages," Solomon said.

The Problem It Solves

The startup is taking on the $35 billion observability market, which has traditionally focused on helping teams troubleshoot and fix issues after they occur. By shifting the focus from reactive debugging to proactive prediction, Empirik aims to offer a fundamentally different value proposition: eliminating the downtime itself, rather than just reducing the time it takes to fix it.

Team and Background

Empirik was founded by Glenn Solomon, who previously co-founded and sold Replicate to Snowflake, and Will Hamilton, who worked on engineering and data. The team also includes the entire engineering and product team from Sisu, an AI analytics startup that closed down earlier this year, which Solomon described as a "team of domain experts in AI and data" with "deep experience in large-scale infrastructure and observability."

Here is the question this launch raises. Empirik has launched with $21 million from Sequoia and GV to predict outages before they happen, taking on the $35 billion observability market. When a startup promises to shift the industry from reactive troubleshooting to proactive prevention, can it truly eliminate downtime, or will it simply add another layer to an already complex monitoring ecosystem?

FAQ:

Q: What does Empirik's platform do?
A: Empirik uses AI to analyse system behaviour and predict outages before they happen. The platform issues "actionable warnings" when it detects patterns that have proceeded past failures.

Q: How much funding did Empirik raise and who led the round?
A: Empirik raised $21 million in seed funding. The round was led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from GV (Google Ventures) and angel investor Elad Gil.

Q: What is Empirik's valuation?
A: Empirik was valued at $70 million post-money in its seed round.

Q: What is the difference between Empirik and traditional observability tools?
A: Traditional observability tools help teams troubleshoot issues after they occur. Empirik aims to eliminate downtime by predicting outages before they happen.

Q: Who are the founders of Empirik?
A: Empirik was founded by Glenn Solomon, who previously co-founded and sold Replicate to Snowflake, and Will Hamilton. The team also includes former engineers and product leads from Sisu.