We’re excited to share that Honeycomb has completed our first-ever acquisition: we’re joining forces with Grit, bringing on board not only a strong team, but also compelling technology that supercharges our ability to deliver on our mission: to bring observability to every software engineer. This is a strategic move that will help us deepen the value we deliver to customers and accelerate our vision for what modern observability can and should be.
From shared curiosity to strategic fit
Our relationship with Grit began in 2023, sparked by our efforts to find other engineering teams building novel solutions on top of LLMs in production. Like almost every technology company, we were exploring the possibilities of AI, but what stood out about Grit wasn’t just their technical savvy or use of buzzwords—it was their pragmatic application of that AI, paired with novel work to navigate and modify codebases, to solve real engineering problems at scale.
The team at Grit wasn’t chasing hype. They were building real tools to solve real problems—and could be turned to address specific problems we were interested in, like making it easier and faster to adopt open standards like OpenTelemetry and benefit from observability tooling. That kind of grounded innovation (and potential for 1+1=15 partnership!) got our attention. While we came for the AI, we stayed for the customer value.
Aligned on purpose: delivering real value to real problems
At Honeycomb, we’ve always been thoughtful about how we incorporate AI. We’re not interested in novelty; we’re interested in outcomes. That’s why this acquisition makes so much sense: the technology Grit built fills a key gap in our mission of helping engineering teams answer the most fundamental observability question: “Why isn’t my software doing what I expect?”
By combining forces, we’re in a position to:
- Lower the barrier for engineering teams to benefit from best-in-class observability tools
- Accelerate the adoption of open standards like OpenTelemetry
- Enable deeper, richer insights into codebases than ever before, with more AI features that can combine Grit’s codebase knowledge with Honeycomb’s rich observability data to build better software
As Grit founder Morgante Pell put it: “Grit built a powerful codebase analysis engine, but truly understanding software requires observing how it runs in production, and Honeycomb is the best observability platform out there. As an engineer myself, providing a better experience for developers was always the goal of Grit, and we now have the opportunity to do that at an even greater and more impactful scale with Honeycomb. By joining forces, I’m confident we will develop groundbreaking AI agents that change how software is made.”
The team will be sunsetting the current Grit product and incorporating Grit’s AI agents into Honeycomb’s product offerings. GritQL, the query engine for codebase analysis and transformation, will remain open source and available to the community.
Looking ahead: building the future of observability
Observability is not a niche—it’s a core concern and a budgeted priority for every serious engineering organization. With Grit’s tooling and expertise now part of the Honeycomb family, we’re opening up powerful new avenues for our customers to get visibility into their systems, understand their behavior, and drive meaningful outcomes.
This acquisition signals something important: we’re serious about investing in AI—but we’re doing it our way. Thoughtfully. Strategically. And always with the customer front and center.
Welcome to the next chapter of observability.
