Minitap seed backs AI agent to test mobile apps on virtual phones
This article covers Minitap, an AI startup, which has closed a £3m seed round co-led by Moxxie Ventures and Mercuri to speed up mobile app development using an AI agent that operates virtual phones, tests interactions and surfaces issues to developers. The development aims to support mobile development teams by automating testing and UI checks to shorten release cycles and improve developer productivity.
Minitap, an AI startup, has closed a £3 million seed round co-led by Moxxie Ventures and Mercuri to speed up mobile app development by using an AI agent that can operate virtual phones, test interactions and surface issues to developers. The raise arrives as demand grows for tooling that narrows the productivity gap between web and mobile development.
Why it matters
Mobile accounts for a majority of internet usage but, according to Minitap’s founders, development workflows lag behind web tooling. Faster, more reliable automation for testing and UI interactions could materially shorten release cycles for mobile teams and reduce manual intervention when small visual or interaction errors occur.
The announcement also highlights continued investor interest in AI systems that target developer productivity rather than consumer-facing features. Public benchmark results and reproducibility claims add credibility in a crowded AI funding market where measurable performance is increasingly valued.
Inside the product
Minitap’s software connects an AI agent to a virtual phone running in the cloud. The agent views app screens, carries out interactions and reports where flows fail or visuals misalign, allowing engineers to focus on fixes rather than repetitive test work. The founders describe the approach as a full stack effort to enable agentic AI coding tools specifically for mobile development.
The team says the agent outperformed Google DeepMind on a bespoke mobile benchmark and that those results are reproducible. The product is being refined with early design partners, with the company testing pricing and deployment models suitable for development teams and CI pipelines.
Who are the investors?
The seed round totals £3,000,000 and was co-led by Moxxie Ventures and Mercuri, with participation from EWOR, Tekton Ventures and Amigos Venture Capital. Investors point to the reproducible benchmark performance and a gap in tooling for mobile development as motivation for backing the company.
The announcement, Esha Vatsa, Partner at Mercuri, said:
Minitap is one of the first companies that is bringing agentic AI to mobile use and possibly the very first that is taking a full stack approach to enable the use of AI coding agents for mobile app development. This is a substantial challenge and a huge opportunity that Nico and Luc are uniquely positioned to solve.
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Founder perspective
Minitap was founded by Nicolas Dehandschoewercker and Luc Mahoux-Nakamura. The pair began by building internal tools to speed up their own mobile work after becoming frustrated with long development timelines. The company says that, at twenty-three, the founders developed an AI agent that outperformed a DeepMind benchmark as part of that work.
The announcement, Nicolas Dehandschoewercker, Co-founder & CEO at Minitap, said:
We spent two years building our first viral mobile product today, and I'm embarrassed by that timeline. Mobile is 60 per cent of internet usage but moves at 10 per cent of web speed. We built Minitap to close that gap. Minitap plans to use the seed funding to continue product development and to work with early design partners to refine pricing and deployment options.
The bigger picture
The raise sits at the intersection of two trends: investor appetite for AI tooling that improves developer productivity and a push to bring parity between web and mobile release cadences. Larger AI labs and tool vendors have invested in automation, but mobile presents unique UI and interaction challenges that require specialised approaches.
This deal reflects growing interest from AI investors in infrastructure and developer tooling rather than only generative consumer products.
Minitap’s progress will be one to watch for UK and European developers seeking faster mobile workflows; if the company’s benchmarks and design partner pilots translate into reliable saves in engineering time, it could reshape how mobile teams test and ship apps across the region.
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