In today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape, managing IT infrastructure is becoming increasingly complex. Enterprises face mounting challenges as they strive to maintain reliability, minimize downtime, and keep their systems running efficiently. Recognizing this growing problem, tech entrepreneurs Gou Rao and Vinod Jayaraman co-founded NeuBird in late 2023 to tackle these issues head-on. Drawing from their extensive experience in the IT sector, including their successful exit from cloud-native storage startup Portworx (sold to PureStorage for $370 million), the duo envisioned a transformative solution to streamline IT site reliability operations.
NeuBird’s flagship product, Hawkeye, is an AI-powered site reliability engineer (SRE) designed to address the escalating complexity of IT systems. Leveraging generative AI, Hawkeye identifies, diagnoses, and resolves system issues, enabling human engineers to focus on higher-level strategic tasks. With growing interest from investors and enterprises alike, NeuBird is quickly positioning itself as a leader in the AI-driven IT operations space.
The Challenges of Modern IT Operations
Managing IT infrastructure has become a daunting task for organizations across industries. The proliferation of cloud services, microservices architectures, and increasingly intricate software systems has created a web of interdependencies that can be difficult to navigate. For site reliability engineers (SREs), this means an overwhelming volume of alerts, complex troubleshooting processes, and constant firefighting to prevent downtime.
“It’s very hard to find good site reliability engineers. There’s a lot of churn,” says Gou Rao, NeuBird’s CEO. “It doesn’t help that the modern IT stack just keeps getting more and more complex. Humans alone cannot possibly keep up with this kind of change.”
Recognizing these pain points, Rao and Jayaraman set out to develop a solution that could alleviate the burden on SREs while improving overall system reliability. Their answer was Hawkeye—an intelligent “copilot” for IT operations.
Introducing Hawkeye: An AI-Powered SRE
Hawkeye leverages the power of large language models (LLMs) to revolutionize site reliability engineering. Unlike traditional monitoring tools, which rely on predefined rules and manual intervention, Hawkeye continuously analyzes system logs, detects anomalies, and takes proactive steps to resolve issues. Here’s how it works:
- Continuous Monitoring: Hawkeye operates in a continuous loop, scanning for active alerts, alarms, and anomalies across IT systems.
- Automated Troubleshooting: When an issue is detected, Hawkeye attempts to troubleshoot and resolve it autonomously. If it encounters a problem it cannot resolve, it escalates the incident to a human engineer with detailed diagnostic information.
- Comprehensive Insights: Hawkeye taps into system logs, including custom-built ones, using its LLM capabilities. This allows it to interpret and act on a wide range of application scenarios.
- Data Privacy: Operating in a read-only mode, Hawkeye ensures that customers’ proprietary data remains secure. It focuses exclusively on health data, such as CPU usage, error logs, and system performance metrics, without accessing sensitive application or transactional data.
A Promising Start: Funding and Adoption
In April 2024, NeuBird raised $22 million in a seed round led by Mayfield, achieving a $100 million valuation according to PitchBook. This initial funding enabled the company to refine its technology and attract early adopters from industries such as automotive, finance, pharmaceuticals, and technology startups.
While NeuBird wasn’t actively seeking additional funding, Microsoft’s venture fund M12 approached the company with an opportunity too compelling to pass up. With many of NeuBird’s customers already running on Microsoft’s Azure cloud, the partnership promised to amplify the reach of Hawkeye. In December 2024, NeuBird announced a $22.5 million seed extension round led by M12, with participation from Mayfield, Stepstone Group, and Prosperity7 Ventures.
Rao emphasizes that the extension round reflects NeuBird’s strong growth trajectory. “We chose to call the round ‘seed-1’ because we’re positioning ourselves for a larger Series A in the future,” he explains. The valuation for this round, he notes, was significantly higher than the initial seed round, underscoring investor confidence in NeuBird’s potential.
Key Differentiators of Hawkeye
While NeuBird is not the only company developing AI-powered SRE solutions, it stands out in several key areas:
- Robust LLM Reasoning: Hawkeye’s use of advanced LLMs enables it to interpret complex application logs and scenarios with remarkable accuracy. This minimizes the likelihood of encountering unfamiliar log messages.
- Proactive Problem-Solving: Unlike reactive monitoring tools, Hawkeye proactively identifies and addresses issues before they escalate, reducing downtime and improving system reliability.
- Scalability: Hawkeye’s architecture is designed to operate efficiently at scale, making it suitable for organizations of all sizes—from startups with a single IT engineer to large enterprises.
- Focus on Privacy: By operating in read-only mode and avoiding access to sensitive data, Hawkeye meets the stringent privacy requirements of industries such as banking and healthcare.
Competitive Landscape
NeuBird is entering a competitive market, with several other startups and established players developing AI-driven SRE tools. Y Combinator-backed companies such as SRE.ai, Opslane, and Parity launched similar solutions in 2024, and larger players like Moogsoft offer automated incident response features.
Despite this competition, NeuBird’s unique approach and strong investor backing set it apart. “Like sales automation and customer service automation, copilots are coming for many developer and DevOps functions,” says Mayfield’s managing partner. “NeuBird’s Hawkeye is leading the charge in this space.”
Real-World Impact
NeuBird has already begun making a tangible impact on its customers. One financial institution, for example, uses Hawkeye to manage its complex IT stack with strict data localization requirements and multi-language support. Hawkeye’s ability to operate in Arabic and handle geographically distributed systems proved invaluable.
Startups with limited IT resources have also benefited from Hawkeye’s capabilities. “We’ve seen organizations with just one IT operations engineer adopt Hawkeye to keep up with incident tickets and maintain system uptime,” says Rao.
The Road Ahead
Looking forward, NeuBird plans to expand its reach and continue innovating. The company is actively working on enhancing Hawkeye’s capabilities, exploring integrations with additional cloud platforms, and building partnerships to accelerate adoption.
“We hope to see more AI researchers and developers embrace automation solutions like Hawkeye,” Rao says. “The modern IT stack is only going to get more complex, and tools like Hawkeye are essential for navigating this new reality.”
With its innovative approach, strong investor support, and growing customer base, NeuBird is well-positioned to become a leader in the AI-powered IT operations space. As enterprises continue to grapple with the challenges of managing complex IT systems, NeuBird’s Hawkeye offers a compelling solution that combines efficiency, reliability, and scalability.
