Andrei Serban

He was a computer science student at the University of Waterloo. A 2020 University of Waterloo news release states that Everest Munro-Zeisberger, a fellow computer science student, noticed while working with GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry’s ClusterFuzz team that fuzzing, a software testing method, was available mainly to large companies, and wanted to make it accessible to companies of any size; back at Waterloo he teamed up with Andrei Serban and Sabera Hussain, a Liberal Arts student, to build a platform that lets developers and security teams run a “continuous feedback loop that can iterate thousands of times per second, 24 hours a day” to find obscure bugs and vulnerabilities.⁠[1][2]

BetaKit wrote in 2019 that Fuzzbuzz was co-founded in 2018 in Kitchener-Waterloo by Sabera Hussain, Andrei Serban and Everest Munro-Zeisberger at Velocity, the Waterloo-based incubator. A 2025 StartupCafe.ro article instead states that he founded Fuzzbuzz in 2019.⁠[3][4]

In 2018 the three won $25,000 with their pitch at the winter Velocity Fund Pitch Competition. BetaKit writes that before its 2019 seed round Fuzzbuzz had completed a CA$25,000 seed round from Velocity.⁠[1][2][3]

He took Fuzzbuzz through Y Combinator’s Winter 2019 batch (W19). Y Combinator’s company page describes Fuzzbuzz as “Fuzzing as a Service,” lists Sabera Hussain, Everest Munro-Zeisberger and Andrei Serban as its three founders, gives its location as San Francisco and its status as acquired.⁠[5][6]

On April 18, 2019, TechCrunchTechCrunchTechCrunch is an American technology news outlet founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington and Keith Teare and headquartered in San Francisco; it mainly covers technology companies, startups, and venture capital, and hosts events such as TechCrunch Disrupt. Its ownership passed successively through AOL, Verizon, and Yahoo, and in 2025 Regent announced its acquisition.Open the full entry covered Fuzzbuzz’s $2.7 million seed round, led by Fuel Capital with participation from Homebrew and Susa Ventures, and with angel investors including the Docker co-founder Solomon Hykes, the Mesosphere co-founder Florian LeibertFlorian LeibertFlorian Leibert, known as Flo Leibert, is a software engineer and venture capitalist who co-founded the data-center software company Mesosphere and served as its first chief executive, and later became a managing partner of the venture capital firm 468 Capital.Open the full entry and the Looker co-founder Ben Porterfield. BetaKit wrote on April 22 that the round amounted to CA$3.6 million and that most of the money would go to the first key engineering hires, scaling the platform and adding fuzzing support for Java, Ruby and JavaScript; TechCrunch wrote that the three founders, Andrei Serban, Everest Munro-Zeisberger and Sabera Hussain, planned to use the money to hire more engineers and build a more complete product.⁠[7][3]

TechCrunch identified him as Fuzzbuzz’s co-founder and chief executive. He explained fuzzing in the article this way: “It’s a type of automated software testing that can perform thousands of tests per second.” The article states that Fuzzbuzz delivered fuzzing as a cloud service and used artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze results and generate new tests; he said that his co-founder Everest Munro-Zeisberger had worked on Google Chrome’s fuzzing team, which had found more than 15,000 bugs with the technique. The company’s blog post stated that users could start fuzzing in less than 20 minutes and that the service hooked directly into GitHub and CI/CD pipelines, categorized and de-duplicated each bug found and notified developers through tools such as Slack and Jira; the company was then in its early days and working with some initial customers.⁠[7]

BetaKit wrote that Fuzzbuzz’s early partnerships, all at an early stage, included fuzzing for EthereumEthereumEthereum is an open, general-purpose smart contract blockchain that launched in 2015, and its native asset is ether (ETH). The project was proposed by Vitalik Buterin and advanced jointly by eight co-founders; the network now uses proof of stake and centers on the EVM, the account model, a rollup scaling roadmap, and the open EIP process.Open the full entry, Google and IPFS, and that it was working on Google’s open-source Syzkaller project.⁠[3]

The investor Homebrew, in its post on the investment, wrote that “Andrei is an accomplished software developer” with experience at Confluent and Cloudflare, and that Homebrew had partnered with Fuel Capital and Susa Ventures to provide Fuzzbuzz with its $2.7 million seed financing.⁠[8]

On July 10, 2019, the Thiel Foundation announced its 2019 class of 22 Thiel Fellows, each of whom receives $100,000 over the two-year program along with mentorship from the foundation’s network of technology founders, investors, and scientists. He is item 2 on the list, which gives his locations as Mississauga, Ontario, and San Francisco, CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry, his field as “Software, Cybersecurity” and his project as Fuzzbuzz; the announcement describes Fuzzbuzz as an automated software testing platform that generates and runs thousands of tests per second to help developers find bugs and security vulnerabilities in their code.⁠[9]

StartupCafe.ro writes that he received a $100,000 Thiel FellowshipThiel FellowshipThe Thiel Fellowship is a two-year grant program started by investor Peter Thiel and run by the Thiel Foundation that funds young people who skip or stop out of college to build new things instead. The program has been criticized by figures in education for encouraging young people to leave college.Open the full entry grant in 2019 to leave university; Upstarts Media wrote in 2025 that he is a Thiel Fellow who dropped out of the University of Waterloo.⁠[4][6]

On December 14, 2020, the University of Waterloo published an article on the people from the university named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for 2021, including the Fuzzbuzz co-founders Andrei Serban, Everest Munro-Zeisberger and Sabera Hussain in the Enterprise Technology category; the article lists the three under the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Mathematics. Rippling’s post announcing its acquisition of Fuzzbuzz also states that Andrei Serban and Everest Munro-Zeisberger were both ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry 30 Under 30 recipients.⁠[1][2][10]

Rippling announced its acquisition of Fuzzbuzz; in the announcement post, Brad Armstrong, its senior vice president of business and corporate development, wrote that Fuzzbuzz had been co-founded by Andrei Serban and Everest Munro-Zeisberger and had a team of six engineers with years of experience building application security tooling that fits into developer workflows to find bugs and vulnerabilities before they reach production, and that the team would help accelerate some of Rippling’s most important engineering efforts, from new products to infrastructure. The post states that over 50 former founders work at Rippling and closes: “Welcome, Andrei, Everest, and team.”⁠[10]

The investor Homebrew wrote on January 13, 2023, that Rippling had announced it had acquired Fuzzbuzz and that the Fuzzbuzz team would join Rippling’s engineering organization to strengthen and extend its platform infrastructure. TechCrunch wrote in 2025 that the acquisition took place in 2023; a 2025 StartupCafe.ro article gives 2023 in one place and 2022 in another.⁠[11][12][4]

After Fuzzbuzz was acquired he joined Rippling, where he led product for the apps and integrations team and came to realize the importance of IT’s manual work. Upstarts Media writes that he had just started at Rippling when the ChatGPTChatGPTChatGPT is a generative AI assistant launched by OpenAI on November 30, 2022. Through websites and applications, it provides conversation, writing, coding, search, file analysis, and image and voice interaction. It evolved from a free research preview into personal, enterprise and education plans, gradually adding deep research, Study mode and cross-application task execution. Its use has prompted continuing discussions about factual accuracy, personal privacy, copyright, education and teen safety.Open the full entry craze began in earnest in early 2023, that he briefly led IT product there, and that because he “didn’t want to miss the wave” he left after just five months. StartupCafe.ro writes that, by the data on his LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry profile, he was a product lead at Rippling for a few months in 2023; a June 2025 TechCrunch article instead states that he left Rippling “last year,” that is, in 2024.⁠[12][6][4]

With Neal Chandra as chief technology officer, he co-founded the AI IT-support company Console in San Francisco and became its chief executive; Upstarts Media writes that the company got started in May 2024. TechCrunch and StartupCafe.ro both give 2024 as Console’s founding year, and StartupCafe.ro writes that he founded the company in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry.⁠[6][13][4]

Upstarts Media writes that Console started with customers writing “playbooks” on how to handle situations; once connected to a customer’s business apps, Console handled requests directly and escalated only exceptions or edge cases to humans, unlike earlier chatbots that mostly turned questions into tickets that people still had to resolve. TechCrunch writes that employees message Console’s AI agent in SlackSlackSlack is a team communication and collaboration platform developed from an internal tool at Tiny Speck. It organizes work through channels, direct messages, searchable history and integrations, with features including Huddles, Clips, Canvas and AI assistance. Its paid service launched in February 2014, and Salesforce completed its acquisition in July 2021.Open the full entry, which knows each user’s laptop model and the applications they have permission to use and resolves more than half of requests on its own, such as password resets, access to apps such as Figma and Miro and routine troubleshooting, escalating complex issues to IT staff; Console’s competitors include older automation tools such as Moveworks, which ServiceNowServiceNowServiceNow is an American enterprise cloud software company founded by Fred Luddy in 2004. It initially entered the enterprise market through IT service management and later expanded its workflow platform to employee service, customer service, security, and artificial intelligence applications. The company listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2012 under the ticker symbol NOW.Open the full entry acquired in March 2025 for $2.85 billion. He said: “We’re able to get there so fast because we don’t require you to replace your help desk.”⁠[6][12][4]

On June 2, 2025, TechCrunch covered Console’s $6.2 million raise from Thrive CapitalThrive CapitalThrive Capital is an investment firm led by chief executive Joshua Kushner that builds and invests in internet, software and technology-enabled companies, with investments including Cursor and Chai Discovery. Kushner is also chief executive of Thrive Holdings, a long-term holding company.Open the full entry, writing that fast deployment had helped it win customers including Scale AI, Flock SafetyFlock SafetyFlock Safety is a public safety technology company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, founded in 2017 by Garrett Langley and others. Its main business is automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) cameras and a vehicle data network that law enforcement agencies can query across jurisdictions, and it also offers gunshot detection, video, drones, and other products. Its camera network has expanded rapidly in the United States and has drawn controversy over privacy, data sharing, and uses related to immigration enforcement.Open the full entry and Calendly. Vince Hankes, a partner at Thrive Capital, said in the article that Thrive had been looking at using AI for IT work since ChatGPT launched in late 2022; he acknowledged that fast integration could make Console seem replaceable but expected the product to improve quickly with use and become deeply embedded. The company planned to expand into employee requests for HR, finance and legal. He said in the article: “We want Console to be an employee’s first call for help.”⁠[12]

Upstarts Media writes that the $6 million seed round, announced in June 2025, was led by Thrive Capital with SV AngelSV AngelSV Angel is a San Francisco venture capital firm cofounded in 2009 by angel investor Ron Conway and former Google executive David Lee. It typically writes small follow-on checks in seed rounds and has invested in companies such as Airbnb, Pinterest, and Dropbox; in 2018 it said it would no longer raise new funds from outside investors, and from 2022 it set up growth funds.Open the full entry, and that Console had six people at the time. StartupCafe.ro writes that the $6.2 million seed round closed in June with money from Thrive Capital.⁠[6][4]

On September 16, 2025, Upstarts Media wrote that Console, three months after its seed round, had raised a $23 million Series A led by DST Global Partners and Thrive Capital, with participation from SV Angel, Abstract Ventures, the Ramp founders Eric GlymanEric GlymanEric Glyman is a fintech entrepreneur and the co-founder and co-CEO of Ramp. He previously co-founded Paribus, an online price-tracking and refund service that Capital One acquired in 2016. In 2019 he founded Ramp with Karim Atiyeh and Gene Lee, using the corporate card as an entry point into expense management and finance automation; since June 2026 he has shared the chief executive role with Atiyeh.Open the full entry and Karim AtiyehKarim AtiyehKarim Atiyeh is a co-founder of Ramp, a U.S. corporate spend management company, where he previously served as chief technology officer and has been co-CEO alongside Eric Glyman since June 2026. Before that he co-founded Paribus, a consumer refund app with Glyman that was later acquired by Capital One.Open the full entry, the Box chief executive Aaron LevieAaron LevieAaron Levie is an American enterprise software entrepreneur and angel investor, and the co-founder and chief executive officer of Box. He co-founded Box in 2005, led the company’s shift from an online file-sharing service to enterprise content management, and took the company public in 2015.Open the full entry, the Palo Alto Networks chief executive Nikesh AroraNikesh AroraNikesh Arora is the chairman and chief executive officer of Palo Alto Networks. He previously served as chief business officer of Google and as president and chief operating officer of SoftBank, and his career spans investment, mobile telecommunications, internet business operations, and cybersecurity.Open the full entry and the Quora chief executive Adam D’AngeloAdam D’AngeloAdam D’Angelo is the co-founder and CEO of Quora, a former chief technology officer of Facebook, and a director of OpenAI. From the question-and-answer and knowledge-sharing business he developed the AI chat platform Poe, and he also invests in technology companies. His career spans programming, internet product management, and artificial intelligence governance.Open the full entry. The article states that Console’s customers included RampRampRamp is a corporate financial technology company founded in 2019 by Eric Glyman, Karim Atiyeh and Gene Lee. It provides corporate cards, expense reimbursement, bill payments, procurement and finance automation. Glyman and Atiyeh became co-CEOs in June 2026.Open the full entry, Flock Safety, Scale AI, Webflow and Zip and that its agents handled more than 50% of their IT tickets automatically; the staff had grown from six at the seed round to 15, and he planned to double that by the end of the year; the company declined to share updated revenue.⁠[6]

The article gives the example of Bloomerang, which makes software for thousands of nonprofits to manage fundraising: with about 600 employees and contractors, its 10-person IT team used to handle about 300 tickets a month; Console handled about half of them, after which employees’ requests doubled; Bloomerang’s HR and finance teams also adopted Console, which deflects more than 70% of HR questions. Console also practices “customer-driven engineering,” in which engineers work with customers to map playbooks and add features, and a solution built for one customer, such as support for Okta, can be applied across its customer base; the article states that Console was expanding into HR, finance and legal support and might add an agent that takes over an employee’s screen to troubleshoot and help with preparing compliance documents or audits.⁠[6]

In the article he said: “No one actually enjoys the way IT support is done today,” and: “We think that IT teams should be driving innovation in the organization, helping them to be more efficient.” He described Console’s long-term aim as “the platform for what we’re calling the autonomous organization,” in which staff no longer do repetitive tasks but tell a system how the company works and give it the data it needs, and the system does the work. He also said: “We’re almost doing an AI consulting role for a lot of these teams,” and “None of our customers have done any RIFs or layoffs on the IT team as a result of adopting Console.”⁠[6]

On September 1, 2026, Palo Alto Networks announced from Santa Clara, California, that it had acquired Console and would use it to deepen the agentic capabilities of its Cortex platform; the release did not disclose terms. Speaking as Console’s co-founder and chief executive, he said in the release: “We built Console around a simple idea: people should be able to express an operational goal, and intelligent software should handle the complexity required to achieve it.” He added that joining Palo Alto Networks would give the team the security expertise, platform foundation and global scale to bring that vision to the world’s largest enterprises. Nikesh Arora, chairman and chief executive of Palo Alto Networks, said in the release that the deal marked the shift to “software-as-an-agent,” giving the platform “the arms and legs to deliver autonomous security outcomes across the entire enterprise.”⁠[14]

TechCrunch wrote on September 2, 2026, that two people with knowledge of the deal said Palo Alto Networks had paid $500 million in cash and stock, and that Palo Alto Networks declined to comment. The article states that Console was founded in 2024 and had raised $29 million over two rounds, a $6.2 million seed round led by Thrive Capital and a $23 million Series A co-led by DST Global Partners and Thrive, and that PitchBookPitchBookPitchBook is a private capital market data, research and software company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded by John Gabbert in 2007, it was fully acquired by Morningstar in 2016 at a valuation of $225 million and operates as a Morningstar subsidiary. The PitchBook segment’s revenue was $671.8 million in 2025.Open the full entry valued it at $157 million before the sale; its investors also included SV Angel, Abstract Ventures and Nikesh Arora, who invested as an angel, and its customers included Ramp, Flock Safety and Scale AI. The article adds that Console’s main competitor was Serval, which reached a $1 billion valuation after a $75 million Series B led by Sequoia CapitalSequoia CapitalSequoia Capital is a venture capital firm founded by Don Valentine in 1972, investing from the seed stage through the growth stage. Its historical investments include Apple, Cisco, Google, YouTube, Airbnb, and Stripe; in 2021 it introduced the Sequoia Capital Fund structure, which can continue to hold public securities, and in 2023 its regional businesses became independent brands and partnerships.Open the full entry the previous December, and that PitchBook counts the deal as Palo Alto Networks’ seventh acquisition of 2026.⁠[13]

A July 2025 StartupCafe.ro article describes him as Romanian, its headline calling the AI IT-support startup one founded by a Romanian.⁠[4]

University of Waterloo: Official website: https://uwaterloo.ca/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[15]

Rippling: Official website: https://www.rippling.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[10]

Console: Official website: https://www.console.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[16]

LinkedIn: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrei-serban/ (opens in a new window).⁠[5]