Fastn uses AI agents to facilitate data integration for complex app development

In the age of digital transformation, composability, or the use of modular components, has emerged as a new frontier. Several enterprises are pursuing the architecture to develop complex systems connected to their tech stacks. However, bringing such systems to life can also prove quite challenging, especially due to data silos and fragmented architectures.

Today, Texas-based startup Fastn, founded by Amazon’s former engineering leader Khalid Muaydh, announced $2.6 million in seed funding to address these issues and pave an AI-driven way for building highly performant composable applications.

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Muaydh started Fastn in 2023 after facing several bottlenecks while building complex systems for his previous employers. The biggest issue, he said, was that traditional architectures required developers to manually manage several custom APIs and their integrations across diverse data environments. This demanded complex coding efforts and was incredibly slow and error-prone.

With Fastn, the problem is eliminated by allowing users to build a unified enterprise-grade API using natural language prompts. Essentially, using the platform’s AI agent, the user can describe their app’s functionality and get a functional API, the building block of that application, in a matter of seconds.

“With our AI Agent for APIs, users can describe the type of API they need—whether it’s for reading or writing information on any topic—and the system will automatically generate a production-ready, enterprise-grade API. Users have the option to confirm the API’s details or further customize it through prompts. Similarly, our AI Agent for connectors allows users to create integrations for systems or applications that aren’t pre-integrated with Fastn, enabling efficient custom connection building,” Muaydh said.

Once the API is ready, the user can connect it to their data sources, whether they’re databases, spreadsheets or other applications to pull all information almost instantly. Fastn says it can deliver data in sub-milliseconds, which is crucial for applications like e-commerce product pages.

But, the job’s not done here.

After connecting the data, Fastn also allows users to shape the app’s logic, using pre-built or custom-built components, to handle tasks like data transformation, calculations or decision-making. Plus, it provides the ability to monitor the performance of the application in real-time, giving visibility into crucial metrics like p50, p90 and p99 latency and data flows across all connections.

“If something isn’t working as expected, you can quickly identify and fix the issue. And when you’re ready to launch, deploying your app to different environments is just a few clicks away. To ensure reliability, every generated API or connector can be tested by the user to verify it meets our high standards for enterprise-grade performance. If needed, the user can modify it further, all without writing any code,” Muaydh added.

Adoption by leading enterprises

While Fastn is in its early stages and has only raised $2.6 million, its approach to building composable applications is already drawing attention. Since listing on Product Hunt in July 2024, the company has gained more than 450 users who are testing the platform in their workplace. It also recently signed up HP as its first official enterprise customer.

“HP uses Fastn to seamlessly integrate its applications with customers’ environments, fully embracing composable architecture…For instance, when HP signs and onboards a customer using a different support system, Fastn’s platform enables it to automatically map and orchestrate the data between HP’s systems and the customer’s support system, regardless of the format or environment. This real-time connection breaks down data silos and eliminates the need for extensive custom development, allowing HP to focus on delivering value to their customers in minutes, not months,” Muaydh explained.

He added that they have a dozen mid-size and enterprise customers in the pipeline for this year.

However, as the integration and orchestration market grows, it will be interesting to see how the company differentiates from other long-standing and heavily funded players in the category like Mulesoft and Snaplogic.

According to Mordor Intelligence, the market for system integration is estimated to grow from $485.41 billion in 2024 to $778.92 billion by 2029, with a growth rate of nearly 10%.

Fonte: https://venturebeat.com/data-infrastructure/fastn-uses-ai-agents-to-facilitate-data-integration-for-complex-app-development/