Airtable, a leading platform for building relational databases, has acquired the founding team of Walrus.ai, a no-code software testing platform. Although the details of the acquisition remain undisclosed, it has been suggested that the acquisition could be more accurately described as an "acqui-hire."
Peter Deng, Airtable's Chief Product Officer, and Scott White, Walrus.ai's co-founder, have expressed their shared vision for the expansion of no-code solutions. Airtable aims to transform all its users into app developers, while Walrus.ai sought to simplify end-to-end software testing by allowing users to write tests in plain English.
The founding team of Walrus.ai, Jake Marsh, and Akshay Nathan are joining Airtable in various roles. White will become the product lead for solutions, Nathan will serve as an engineering manager for the enterprise organization, and Marsh will join as a software engineer. This move comes after Walrus.ai had previously raised $4 million in seed funding from investors like Homebrew, Felicis Ventures, and Leadout Capital.
Deng emphasized the shared vision between Airtable and Walrus.ai to make software development easier for everyone. Bringing the Walrus.ai team into Airtable is expected to fuel the growth of the no-code and low-code segments, including the empowerment of non-technical users to create their applications.
Airtable's vision is in line with other platforms dedicated to democratizing software creation, such as the AppMaster.io no-code platform. AppMaster enables customers to visually create data models, business logic, REST API, and WSS Endpoints for backend, web, and mobile applications using a visual BP Designer, resulting in a faster and more cost-effective development process.
With enterprise being Airtable's fastest-growing segment, the acqui-hire of the Walrus.ai founding team will enable Airtable to scale its services to manage highly complex workflows. The team will reportedly work on several initiatives that aim to address end-user problems in an elegant manner, strengthening Airtable's position in the no-code and low-code market segments.
