The way engineers, product managers, and designers work together is still slow and janky, says one Y Combinator-backed startup.
Now, it’s raised $6.1 million to help non-engineers directly make changes to a company’s existing codebase using AI agents.
San Francisco-based Lightsprint said its software can turn a plain English request into a reviewable pull request, which is a proposed code change that engineers inspect before merging it into production. This allows non-technical staffers such as product managers (PMs), designers, and operations workers to get more directly involved in shipping software.
“We found that actually there were a lot of PMs like me as well as designers who actually really wanted to shift to production,” Benjamin Ong, Lightsprint’s cofounder and CEO, told Business Insider.
AI has changed the work of designers and product managers. Designers increasingly use generative AI tools to make early concepts and prototypes faster, while product managers are using agents and vibe-coding tools. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a 5% growth in web and digital interface designer employment from 2025 to 2035.
Ong said software development has traditionally involved a long chain of handoffs: a product manager writes a requirements document, engineers assess technical feasibility, designers create mockups, and engineers ultimately rebuild the feature in code. That could take up to two to three months.
The startup, which Ong, Benedict Chan, and Heng Hong Lee founded earlier this year, is positioning itself against the fragmented tools many companies use to build products — including prototyping software such as Lovable, design software like Figma, and coding assistants such as Anthropic’s Claude.
Lightsprint says it’s a one-stop shop that connects to a company’s existing code. Then its agents can write product requirements documents, generate code, and create live previews. After, human engineers can review the code and decide whether to add it to their software.
The startup began working with early users in April and now works with over 100 companies. Lightsprint went through Y Combinator’s Spring 2026 batch. 645 Ventures led its seed round, along with January Capital, Rebel Fund, and angel investors, including Opendoor CEO Kaz Nejatian.
The startup has a six-person team split between San Francisco and Singapore. Ong said the new funding will go toward hiring in business sales, marketing, design, and engineering.
“We’re seeing product managers, designers, and even business teams build features and submit high-quality code changes themselves, while engineering stays in control,” said Ong.
Check out the pitch deck it used to secure the funding:
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