In 2023, co-founders Karim Jouini and Jihed Othmani sold their expense management startup Expensya to Swedish procurement software company Medius, which is considered one of the largest acquisitions of startups in Africa. Some sources said the payment just exceeded $120 million despite not revealing the terms of the deal.

Successfully achieved success, both founders vowed to entrepreneurship and never intended to start another startup, Jouini became the CTO role in the merged software company, and other acquisitions spanned three continents.

But the appeal of the new wave of technology – generated AI – and the idea that they might be able to build something with something bigger makes them reintegrate into it.

They told TechCrunch that the two have now co-created a software test platform that generates AI-powered, and have received $9 million in seed funding.

"It's very crazy because we promised not to do another company because Expensya is too hard," Jouini told TechCrunch. "But I think it's like when people have two kids, they forget how hard it is for the first kid. This new adventure is less than six months old and it's already super intense, but we're fired. We firmly believe it's the material for the unicorn."

Jouini said the spark he missed after years of serving as the host of Expensya after transitioning to Medius’s technical head has reignited the spark. As he oversees the integration of six companies on three continents, he witnessed first-hand how generative AI can reshape the software industry. Testing is a common problem, and no matter the product, it recognizes the idea of ​​thunder code.

Lightning code performs slow manual testing with AI-powered "agents" mimicking human testers. These agents simulate the quality checking process, capture subtle UI and UX problems, and learn from feedback.

Determined to avoid Expensya's early mistakes, Jouini prioritizes speed. "We shipped our first MVP in Week 6, and now the product has a lot more six months than Expensya has in Year 4," he said, reflecting a broad belief in startups that fast feedback trumps perfect plans.

The Thunderbolt Code has attracted attention, with customers and pilot programs paid in the United States, Canada, France and Tunisia. The company works with a team of delivery managers, quality assurance stores and developers, eager to test and ship faster. Its current focus is on web application testing and plans to expand to mobile, desktop and API testing by the end of 2025.

In addition to speed, Jouini's second rodeo also applies courses from Expensya for other labor, such as focusing on core functions and getting the best talent as soon as possible. He has nothing to do with early dilution, because it has to do with investing in top talent. "Many African entrepreneurs are afraid to dilute capital because they want to keep it 100%. We believe that if we create a unicorn while diluting ourselves, it would be good value."

However, Jouini believes that AI will make Thunder Code 10 times more valuable with fewer people, which is with a wider sentiment turning to thinner AI-driven teams.

Despite this, Jouini admits that despite the familiarity of pain points, the leap from expense management to software developer tools is a leap. However, he believes software testing is a larger, more complex market, expected to exceed $100 billion by 2027, but is still dominated by platforms based on older code such as Tricentis and Browserstack, which could be slow. He believes that Thunder Code's rapid execution of AI gives it an advantage even with similar new agent products.

Headquartered in Paris with an office in Tunisia, Thunderbolt Code joins an increasingly crowded startup that all try to do with participants, from Uipath to startups like Jetify, Nova AI, and more.

His co-founder Othmani built internal AI tools on the expensya tools created by Gentgpt, which helped his co-founder Othmani built internal AI tools before Chatgpt caused a sensation. Jouini said their supplemental skills and $9 million raised in six months raised the Thunder Code to move quickly and gain market share.

The funding round includes familiar faces of Expensya’s hat-stand, including Silicon Badia and Jaango Capital, as well as strategic angels like Titan Seed Fund and Roxanne Varza (F Station F Station F), as well as Karim Beguir, CEO of Instadeep, Africa’s largest AI startup. Previous and current Expensya employees cashed out during the acquisition period also made investments. "Some of our investors are actually Expensya employees, and I'm glad it works that way," Jouini said.