MetalBear, an Israeli startup that created the open-source Kubernetes tool mirrord, has raised $12.5 million in Seed funding. The company aims to solve a major challenge in software development: testing code in realistic cloud environments.
The funding round was led by TLV Partners and included investments from TQ Ventures, MTF, Netz Capital, and angel investors such as Sentry co-founder David Cramer and OpenTelemetry co-creator Ben Sigelman.
Even though AI can now help developers write code in seconds, testing that code in complex cloud environments is still slow and difficult. Developers often use incomplete local simulations or wait for access to staging environments, which can take days.
Some companies spend millions on individual developer environments, but these still cause delays and slow down the development process.
“We’re witnessing a mismatch in modern development,” said Eyal Bukchin, MetalBear’s CTO and co-founder. “AI can now generate code in seconds, but developers still face constant friction testing it. Every small change requires another deployment cycle, another wait, another context switch. The industry has accepted this as normal, but it is actually the biggest hidden bottleneck in software development today.”
MetalBear’s solution is mirrord, a tool that lets developers link their local code directly to cloud environments with just one click.
Mirrord works by routing input and output to the cloud, allowing developers to use databases, APIs, and message queues as if their code was running in the cloud—without needing to deploy it.
“The first time developers use mirrord, they often can’t believe what they’re seeing,” said Aviram Hassan, MetalBear’s co-founder and CEO. “They toggle a button in their IDE, hit debug, and suddenly their local code is interacting with microservices, remote databases, and third-party services. For many teams, it’s the first time they can run their code locally at all.”
The open-source version of mirrord is used by thousands of developers at companies like NVIDIA, AWS, and Apple. Teams say it helps them test code 80% faster and reduces production bugs by 30%.
The enterprise version lets multiple developers share one staging environment. It uses traffic routing and data isolation to avoid conflicts, helping cut costs and save time.
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