The tech world is both in awe of and fearful of vibe coding.
On one hand, tech giants are all in on these AI-assisted coding tools. They’re touting efficiency gains, listing it as a need-to-have in job descriptions, buying their employees subscriptions, and even investing in vibe-coding startups themselves.
They’re also seeing their shares take a hit as investors dump legacy software stocks over concerns that AI and vibe coding will allow companies to build their own software rather than buy.
Both narratives are driving the valuations of vibe-coding startups such as Lovable, Cursor, and Replit, now well into the billions.
“Our mission has always been that every human with an idea and an internet connection should be able to build any app they want,” Amjad Masad, the CEO of Replit, said in a release on Wednesday, announcing his company’s $9 billion valuation.
The industry has also seen its fair share of deals. In July, AI startup Cognition snatched up Windsurf after OpenAI’s $3 billion deal to acquire the vibe coding tool maker fell through. Just one month before, web design platform Wix bought Base44, a six-month-old startup bootstrapped by a solo founder, for $80 million.
These entrants are competing with far bigger and better-funded players, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Microsoft, that make their own AI-powered coding tools.
Business Insider compiled a list of the startups riding the vibes, detailing their latest valuations, fundraises, and what they’re best known for.
Lovable
Based in Stockholm and launched in 2024, Lovable is among the biggest players in the vibe coding world and one of the fastest-growing startups.
Earlier this week, Business Insider reported that the Swedish startup’s annual recurring revenue has surged by more than 30%, from $300 million to $400 million in a single month. ARR, a key metric to gauge startup performance, refers to the predictable revenue a company expects to generate over a year.
Lovable, founded by Anton Osika and Fabian Hedin, was valued at $6.6 billion in a December funding round led by CapitalG and Menlo Ventures.
Lovable’s chief revenue officer, Ryan Meadows, told Business Insider that the company plans to more than double its head count by the end of the year, from 146 to 350 employees.
He added that Lovable, which specializes in making coding user-friendly, now sees 200,000 new vibe coding projects created each day.
Cursor
Cursor, a household name among software developers and AI enthusiasts, continues to see its valuation boom, even as it is being brutally compared to Anthropic’s Claude Code.
On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that the San Francisco-based AI coding company is in talks for a new funding round that would value the startup at about $50 billion. The startup, founded in 2022, was last valued at $29.3 billion in December. Cursor is backed by investors including Accel, Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Nvidia.
After Anthropic released its latest model, Opus 4.6, last month, some founders and developers said that they are ditching Cursor for Anthropic’s Claude Code.
Replit
Replit, founded in 2016, touts itself as an all-in-one platform that not only generates code but also builds, hosts, and deploys applications in one place.
Over the past few years, Replit has pivoted from a collaborative coding environment to the Replit Agent that can turn plain-English descriptions into working applications, lowering the barrier to entry for beginner coders.
On Wednesday, the startup announced that it raised a $400 million Series D round at a $9 billion valuation, led by previous investor Georgian Partners. Other investors include Coatue, Andreessen Horowitz, Craft Ventures, Y Combinator, Accenture Ventures, and angels Shaquille O’Neal and Jared Leto.
Emergent
Emergent, founded out of Y Combinator’s startup class of 2024 by twin brothers Mukund Jha and Madhav Jha, is one of the newest but fastest-growing vibe coding platforms. Similar to Replit, Emergent says it allows users to “build full-stack, production-ready applications using just natural language prompts.”
The startup says it has 5 million users and has seen ARR rise from $100,000 to $50 million in just seven months.
In January, Business Insider reported that the startup raised $70 million in Series B funding from Khosla Ventures and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with participation from Prosus, Lightspeed, Together, and Y Combinator. The startup’s valuation was not disclosed.
Emergent’s $23 million Series A round closed in September, signaling how eager investors are to get in on the growing pie.
“A lot of the other platforms, they’re great for prototyping, they’re great for demos, but when it comes to really managing the entire lifecycle of software development, they fall short,” CEO Mukund Jha told Business Insider. “That’s a gap we are trying to fill in the market right now.”
Poolside AI
Paris-based Poolside was cofounded in 2023 by former GitHub head of tech Jason Warner and software entrepreneur Eiso Kant. The company focuses on building models that can write computer software and coding applications.
In October, Bloomberg reported that Nvidia plans to invest up to $1 billion in Poolside, its second investment in the startup. The Nvidia investment would be part of a $2 billion round that Poolside is raising at a $12 billion valuation, per Bloomberg.
StackBlitz’s Bolt
StackBlitz, founded in 2017 and headquartered in San Francisco, credits its survival to Bolt, a vibe coding platform the company launched in 2024 when it was struggling with dwindling revenue.
Bolt, which uses Anthropic’s models to let users build what they want with plain English generated about $1 million in ARR in the first week it came out, cofounder Eric Simons told Business Insider last year. The week after, it added another $1 million in ARR, and then another.
“I had slept three hours a night for a week straight to get the release out with our team,” Simons told Business Insider about Bolt’s release. “After seeing it live, and people loving it — beyond anything I had ever created before — I cried, alone at my desk in my backyard shed office.”
In January 2025, Bloomberg reported that StackBlitz was in talks with investors to raise money at a $700 million valuation.
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