Gremlin

Gremlin provides a reliability management platform designed for engineering teams to proactively ensure the resilience of their systems. The core product enables organizations to conduct chaos engineering experiments, safely simulating real-world outages and infrastructure failures. Through controlled “attacks” on their own systems, companies can identify vulnerabilities, validate disaster recovery plans, and build more robust applications before issues impact customers.

The company was co-founded in 2016 by Kolton Andrus and Matthew Fornaciari, who identified a critical need within the technology landscape for systematic approaches to system reliability. Their shared vision centered on transforming how organizations approach software stability, moving from reactive incident response to proactive chaos engineering, stemming from their experiences with large-scale distributed systems.

Gremlin's platform is utilized by various engineering teams focused on maintaining high availability and performance for their digital services. Its mission is to standardize and automate reliability practices, empowering organizations to continuously improve their system integrity. The long-term vision aims to contribute to a more dependable internet by making advanced reliability practices accessible and manageable for all businesses.

# Gremlin: High-Level Overview

Gremlin is a SaaS platform that helps engineering teams proactively manage software reliability through Chaos Engineering.[1][3] The company's mission is to help build a more reliable internet and empower every business to build more reliable software by transforming failure into resilience.[1][2] Gremlin serves engineering teams and enterprises across industries—particularly finance, retail, and technology—where system uptime directly impacts revenue. The platform enables teams to safely experiment on complex systems, identify vulnerabilities before they affect customers, and validate disaster recovery capabilities.[3] With approximately 75 employees and $15.4 million in annual revenue, Gremlin has achieved rapid adoption among enterprise cloud engineering teams, crossing $10 million in annualized recurring revenue by 2021 and anticipating 100% growth in 2022.[2][4] Key customers include GrubHub, JPMorgan Chase, Target, Twilio, Walmart, and Under Armour.[2]

# Origin Story

Gremlin pioneered the commercialization of Chaos Engineering, a technology approach inspired by practices at Netflix and Amazon.[4] The company was founded by Kolton Andrus, who now serves as CTO after the appointment of Josh Leslie as CEO.[4] Gremlin launched as the world's first hosted Chaos Engineering service, establishing itself as the category leader.[2] The company has raised $52 million in funding from investors including Amplify Partners, Index Ventures, and Redpoint Ventures.[4] Since its inception, Gremlin has evolved from a pure Chaos Engineering tool to a comprehensive Reliability Management Platform, expanding its offerings to include pre-built reliability tests, automatic service discovery, and intelligent health monitoring.[3]

# Core Differentiators

• Category Leadership: Gremlin created and drove adoption of Chaos Engineering as a discipline, establishing itself as the world's first hosted service in this space.[4]

• Comprehensive Platform: The company has evolved beyond point-solution Chaos Engineering to offer a full Reliability Management Platform with visibility and control over an organization's entire reliability posture.[1][3]

• Enterprise-Grade Features: Gremlin provides automated risk detection, intelligent health monitoring, and pre-built test suites that reduce the learning curve for enterprises adopting reliability practices.[6]

• Deep Cloud Integration: Gremlin for AWS demonstrates tight integration with major cloud providers, auto-configuring health checks and streamlining onboarding for cloud-native environments.[3]

• Proven Customer Base: The platform is trusted by leading enterprises across multiple industries, validating its effectiveness at scale.[2][4]

# Role in the Broader Tech Landscape

Gremlin operates at the intersection of two critical trends: the increasing complexity of distributed systems and the rising cost of downtime in digital-first businesses. As organizations migrate to cloud-native architectures and adopt microservices, system reliability has become exponentially more difficult to achieve and validate. Gremlin addresses this by democratizing Chaos Engineering—a practice previously limited to hyperscalers like Netflix and Amazon—making it accessible to enterprises of all sizes.[4]

The timing is particularly significant given the emergence of AI-driven systems, where uptime and trust are becoming competitive differentiators.[3] The broader reliability management market is projected to exceed $4 billion by 2032, positioning Gremlin in a high-growth sector.[1] By shifting reliability from a reactive (incident response) to proactive (pre-incident testing) discipline, Gremlin influences how the entire industry approaches system resilience and helps establish reliability as a core engineering practice rather than an afterthought.

# Quick Take & Future Outlook

Gremlin is well-positioned to capture significant market share in the expanding reliability management space. The company's evolution from a specialized Chaos Engineering tool to a comprehensive platform reflects market maturation and customer demand for integrated solutions. As AI systems become more prevalent and system complexity continues to increase, the need for proactive reliability validation will only intensify.

The key question for Gremlin's future is whether it can maintain its technical leadership while scaling to serve the broader enterprise market. The appointment of experienced CEO Josh Leslie suggests the company is preparing for this transition. With strong investor backing, proven enterprise traction, and a market tailwind from digital transformation initiatives, Gremlin appears positioned to become the standard reliability platform for cloud-native enterprises—much as observability platforms have become essential infrastructure for modern engineering teams.