Cypress is a modern testing software company that has redefined automated end-to-end testing for web applications. Founded in 2014, Cypress aims to eliminate the pain points developers and QA teams experience with legacy tools like Selenium by offering a fast, reliable, developer-friendly solution that executes tests directly in the browser—making real-time, interactive, and stable quality assurance an integral part of modern development workflows.
Cypress was founded in Atlanta, Georgia, by Brian Mann and Randall Kent, who were motivated by frustrations with the instability and complexity of existing testing tools. The first commit dates to June 2015, with the company pursuing an open-source/freemium SaaS hybrid model from the start. In 2018, Drew Lanham joined as CEO, bringing significant leadership and growth experience. Cypress launched from closed beta to commercial debut in October 2018, rapidly gaining major customers including Disney, NBA, LEGO, Slack, Shopify, and more. In its first two years, it experienced a 10X revenue increase and quickly became a standard tool among modern agile and DevOps teams.
Cypress has raised over $54 million in total funding, notably a $9.3 million Series A round and a $40 million Series B round in December 2020, backed by OpenView Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Battery Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, and others. With the Series B, Cypress was valued at around $255 million. By 2024, the company’s annual revenue was estimated at $20 million, and its employee base exceeded 130 staff.
Cypress offers two core products: the open-source Cypress App (test runner and framework) and Cypress Cloud (formerly Dashboard), which provides advanced analytics, test result management, parallelization, flake detection, test replay, AI-powered debugging, and integration with CI/CD tools and team collaboration platforms. The platform's strengths include interactive visual test recording and playback, automatic waiting and retry logic, native time-travel debugging, built-in mocking, cross-browser support, component testing for modern JS frameworks, and plug-and-play integrations with Slack, JIRA, GitHub, and more.
In early 2025, Cypress was acquired by John Deere to strengthen software testing across the equipment giant’s agriculture and forestry verticals, extending Cypress technology to new industrial and embedded environments. Before this, Cypress’s growth was almost entirely organic, focused on iterative, community-driven enhancements and partnerships rather than serial acquisitions.
Recent releases (Cypress 15) have continued the evolution with even deeper AI-powered functionalities, self-healing tests (cy.prompt), Studio for no-code/low-code test generation, richer accessibility and UI coverage analytics, and advanced component testing compatible with React, Angular, and other frameworks. Enhanced analytics and cloud-based enterprise reporting have become major selling points for larger organizations driving digital transformation at scale.
Cypress’s culture blends technical innovation, open-source ethos, developer empathy, and a commitment to community excellence. The company values transparency, agility, continuous feedback, and customer-centric product development, with employees and ambassadors contributing directly to documentation, learning resources, and community support around the globe. Cypress has fostered a diverse, remote-friendly environment with a strong focus on integrity, quality, and impact on the development community.
Cypress enjoys a vast, active user and contributor community, with over 40,000 GitHub stars and a rapidly expanding list of enterprise, mid-market, and open-source adopters. The Cypress Ambassador Program, online forums, blog, and global meetups help cultivate best practices and drive ecosystem innovation. Its ambassador network and partner channels—especially in the DevOps, frontend development, and QA automation communities—offer ongoing training, support, and advocacy. Cypress’s role as a developer-centric, open-source platform with strong community engagement remains a key differentiator and growth engine for the company.
