Tessl

What Tessl does

Tessl, founded in 2024 by Guy Podjarny (former co-founder of Snyk) and headquartered in London, operates an AI-native Agent Enablement Platform that lets engineering teams create, version, evaluate, govern, and continuously improve the "skills" consumed by AI coding agents such as Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, and Gemini. The platform is built around the Tessl Registry — a curated library of 2,000+ evaluated skills covering 10,000+ open-source packages — and is complemented by Tessl Review (an LLM-judge-based quality review informed by Anthropic best practices), Task Evals (which measures whether a skill improves an agent's task completion), the Skill Optimizer plugin (which uses evals to auto-improve skills), the Tessl CLI, and tessl-audit (a security-focused scanner that matches skills embedded in codebases against the Registry). Its primary buyer segments are enterprise security leaders (CISOs), platform engineering teams, and engineering leadership, with publicly named customers including Cisco and HashiCorp (IBM).

Tessl monetizes primarily through a quote-based enterprise subscription for the Agent Enablement Platform, sold via a 'Book a Demo' field-sales motion, while the Tessl Registry and CLI are offered free as a self-serve, product-led growth funnel that feeds enterprise pipeline. The company runs a developer-first go-to-market amplified by the AI Native Dev community (50,000+ newsletter subscribers), an original podcast, an active Discord and social presence, and the AI Native DevCon conference series (650+ in-person and ~2,000 online registrations). It has raised $125M in total funding across a Seed round led by boldstart ventures and GV and a €95.1M Series A led by Index Ventures (announced November 2024), with additional participation from Accel.

Name

Tessl

Legal name

Tessl AI Ltd

Website

https://tessl.io

Company type

Private

Founded year

2024

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

Tessl operates an AI-native Agent Enablement Platform that lets enterprise engineering teams build, evaluate, govern, and optimize the skills consumed by AI coding agents such as Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, and Gemini, primarily serving security leaders, platform teams, and engineering leadership.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

AI Development Tools

NAICS

Computer Systems Design Services (541512), Computer Systems Design and Related Services (54151)

SIC

Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370), Services-Prepackaged Software (7372)

akta.pro primary industry

AI Application Enablement Platforms (Copilot/Agent Frameworks, SDKs) (HDAEANAJ)

Keywords

• Agent enablement platform
• AI coding skills
• Developer security tools
• Software governance platform
• Skill registry software

Headquarters

HQ city

London

HQ country

United Kingdom

HQ region

Europe

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Enterprise Subscription: Likely enterprise SaaS subscription for the Agent Enablement Platform, including skills management, governance, evals, and audit capabilities. Acquired via 'Book a Demo' sales motion targeting platform, security, and engineering leadership.
2. Registry (Free): Free self-serve access to the Tessl Registry of evaluated and searchable skills, acting as a top-of-funnel onboarding path and adoption catalyst for paid enterprise deployments.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion4 records

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels7 records

Core offering

Tessl offers an Agent Enablement Platform that lets engineering teams build, version, evaluate, distribute, and govern the "Skills" consumed by AI coding agents such as Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, and Gemini. The platform combines a Tessl Registry of curated evaluated skills, Tessl Review (LLM-judge-based quality review), Task Evals (measurable skill impact), Skill Optimizer (automated skill improvement), and the tessl-audit CLI for security and governance scanning.

Product overview

Tessl offers a single unified Agent Enablement Platform rather than a loose bundle of separate products. The core platform combines the Tessl Registry (a curated, versioned library of evaluated agent Skills), Tessl Review (LLM-judge-based quality review of Skills), Task Evals (measurable evaluation of Skill impact), and the Skill Optimizer plugin (automated Skill improvement). The Tessl CLI and the tessl-audit CLI extend the platform into developers' local workflows and codebases, while complementary programs such as AI Native DevCon and the AI Native Dev Podcast support the broader AI-native developer community. Together, these named products and modules let teams ship, review, evaluate, audit, and continuously improve the Skills consumed by coding agents such as Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, and Gemini.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• AI Native Dev: Community and media brand for AI native software development, including the AI Native Dev blog, podcast, newsletter, events calendar, and Discord community, operated by Tessl.
• AI Native DevCon

Quantifiable outcome

• 2,000+ evaluated skills available in the Tessl Registry
• +3 more outcomes

Named customers2 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration7 records

AI capability10 records

Feature5 records

Partnerships

Four partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• Claude Code (Anthropic)coreTechnology or IntegrationIntegration partner: Tessl's CLI and registry integrate with Claude Code so developers can install and use Tessl skills inside Anthropic's Claude Code AI coding assistant.
• CursorcoreTechnology or IntegrationIntegration partner: Tessl skills integrate with the Cursor AI coding assistant, enabling developers to discover and use evaluated skills inside Cursor.
• GitHub CopilotcoreTechnology or IntegrationIntegration partner: Tessl skills are usable inside GitHub Copilot, extending Copilot's agent capabilities with Tessl's evaluated skill registry.
• GeminicoreTechnology or IntegrationIntegration partner: Tessl supports Google's Gemini AI assistant, allowing developers to use Tessl-managed skills inside Gemini workflows.

Scale indicators7 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Direct peers

• Portkey: AI gateway and observability platform that adds governance, evaluation and routing across LLM providers and agents. Overlaps with Tessl on the agent enablement, governance and eval workflow positioning for production AI systems.
• LangChain (LangSmith): Provides an agent orchestration framework (LangChain) plus an evaluation and observability product (LangSmith) for LLM-powered applications. Directly comparable to Tessl's Registry + Review + Task Evals stack for managing, evaluating, and governing AI agent behavior.
• Composio: Curated registry of tool integrations (skills/APIs) for AI agents, with managed authentication and execution. Most directly comparable to Tessl Registry as an enablement layer that connects coding/agent frameworks to external capabilities.
• Helicone: Open-source LLM observability platform offering logging, evaluation and monitoring for AI applications. Comparable to Tessl's skill-level observability and eval workflows for AI coding agents.
• Arize AI: LLM and agent observability, evaluation and tracing platform used to monitor production AI agents. Comparable to Tessl's Task Evals and Skill Optimizer on the evaluation and continuous-improvement dimension.

Emerging players

• Snyk: Developer security platform founded by Tessl's founder Guy Podjarny. Adjacent category — Snyk secures code and open-source dependencies, while Tessl secures and governs the agent skills layer on top of that code; both target the same CISO/Platform buyer.
• Confident AI (DeepEval): Evaluation framework and SaaS for testing LLM applications and agents, including regression testing of agent behavior. Closely overlaps with Tessl's Task Evals and Review capabilities for measuring agent skill quality.
• PromptLayer: Prompt management, versioning and evaluation platform for LLM applications. Adjacent to Tessl's skills management and review modules, especially for teams standardizing reusable prompt/skill assets.

Broad incumbents

• Cursor: AI-native IDE and coding agent that is both a Tessl integration partner and a potential competitor; could natively bundle skills/agent governance and reduce reliance on third-party registries like Tessl.
• GitHub (Copilot): Operates the GitHub Copilot coding agent and a marketplace/extensions ecosystem that competes for the same skill-distribution surface Tessl targets. Represents the largest incumbent threat that could natively absorb skills registry, governance, and audit functionality.

Market position

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/tessl_io
• YouTubeyoutube.com/@tessl-ai
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/tesslio

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles12 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds2 records

Investors5 records

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Tessl