According to Fortune, AI coding startup Lovable has raised a new funding round led by CapitalG and Menlo Ventures, with heavyweight participation from NVIDIA’s NVentures, Salesforce Ventures, Databricks Ventures, Atlassian, and HubSpot. This comes just one month after the company announced it had reached a staggering $200 million in annual recurring revenue. CEO Steve Osika promotes “vibe-coding,” where users describe a software function in plain language and AI writes the code. He claims companies like Zendesk have cut prototype time from six weeks to three hours using Lovable. The company’s mission is to let anyone be a builder, positioning itself as the last piece of software companies will ever need.
The Promise and the Hype
Here’s the thing: the vision is incredibly seductive. Who wouldn’t want to just tell their computer what they need and have it built? Osika is selling a future where every business, from a bakery to a consultancy, crafts its own perfectly bespoke CRM or inventory system instead of wrestling with off-the-shelf SaaS products. The testimonials are powerful—McKinsey engineers building in hours what took an internal team months? That’s the kind of ROI that gets CFOs to write checks. It taps directly into the massive, latent demand for software solutions that currently languish in endless backlogs because there aren’t enough developers to go around. Basically, it’s the “democratization of development” dream on steroids.
The Skeptics Are Right To Ask Questions
But let’s pump the brakes for a second. The critics have a point, and it’s a crucial one. “Vibe-coding” generating inefficient or insecure code is a real, tangible risk. It’s one thing to prototype a internal dashboard; it’s another to build a core business system handling sensitive customer data with AI-generated code full of hidden vulnerabilities. And then there’s the maintenance problem. Just because a marketing manager can *describe* a tool doesn’t mean they can debug it, update it for a new OS, or scale it when usage spikes. You might solve your initial backlog but create a terrifying “shadow IT” mess of unsupported, brittle software sprawl. Is that really progress?
The Enterprise Reality and Fierce Competition
Lovable seems to be finding its enterprise niche in three areas: building core systems (bold), creating internal tools (pragmatic), and validating ideas with functional prototypes (smart). That last one might be the killer app—turning static mockups into something you can actually click through is a game-changer for product teams. Now, the competitive landscape is getting wild. OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic provide the foundational models for Lovable, but they’re all launching their own coding assistants. Osika calls them “partners,” which is the diplomatic thing to say, but let’s be real: they’re becoming direct competitors. His bet is that Lovable can build a “beloved layer” on top that’s worth paying for. With $200M ARR, you can’t argue with the early results, but the race is just starting.
A Fundamental Shift or a Tool in the Toolbox?
So, is this the end of traditional software development? I don’t think so. Not even close. But it absolutely represents a fundamental shift in the *beginning* of the process. It turns ideation and prototyping from a costly, technical gatekept exercise into a conversational one. The real impact might be on the developer’s role itself—shifting from writing every line of code to becoming AI wranglers, system architects, and code reviewers. For businesses, the allure of speed and customization is undeniable. But the wise ones will use tools like Lovable to augment their teams, not replace the need for deep technical expertise entirely. The dream is “anyone can build.” The reality will probably be “anyone can start building, but you’ll still need pros to finish the job.”
