Lovable: Vibe-Coding Startup Secures $330M at $6.6B Valuation
▼ Summary
– Swedish AI startup Lovable has raised $330 million in a Series B round, achieving a $6.6 billion valuation, which is more than triple its $1.8 billion valuation from just five months prior.
– The company’s core product is a “vibe-coding” tool that allows users to build applications using text prompts, and it has achieved rapid growth, surpassing $200 million in annual recurring revenue within a year of its 2024 launch.
– Lovable has significant enterprise customers like Klarna and Uber, and its platform sees over 100,000 new projects created daily, with more than 25 million projects built in its first year.
– The new funding will be used to expand platform integrations, develop enterprise features, and build out essential infrastructure like databases and payments to support full-scale applications.
– The CEO credits the company’s scaling success to remaining in Sweden instead of relocating to Silicon Valley, and the company recently addressed a controversy over unpaid EU VAT taxes.
The Swedish startup Lovable has secured a massive $330 million in its latest funding round, catapulting its valuation to an impressive $6.6 billion. This Series B investment, led by CapitalG and Menlo Ventures with participation from Khosla Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, and Databricks Ventures, represents a staggering increase from its $1.8 billion valuation just five months prior. The company’s rapid ascent highlights the intense investor appetite for innovative artificial intelligence tools that simplify software development.
Lovable operates in the burgeoning field of “vibe-coding,” providing a platform where users can create full applications and write code using simple text prompts. Since its launch in 2024, the company’s growth trajectory has been nothing short of meteoric. It achieved $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) within just eight months and doubled that figure to surpass $200 million ARR only four months later. The platform’s adoption is significant, with major clients like Klarna, Uber, and Zendesk on board. Lovable reports that over 100,000 new projects are initiated on its system daily, culminating in more than 25 million projects created in its first year alone.
This new capital infusion is earmarked for strategic expansion. The funds will primarily support building deeper integrations with third-party applications, enhancing features tailored for enterprise customers, and developing the core infrastructure, such as databases, payment systems, and hosting solutions, required for building comprehensive applications and services on its platform.
Company leadership attributes this explosive scaling to a deliberate strategic choice. Co-founder and CEO Anton Osika, speaking at the Slush conference in Helsinki, emphasized his decision to keep Lovable headquartered in Stockholm despite investor pressure to relocate to Silicon Valley. He argued that building a global AI company is possible from Sweden, citing the availability of talent driven by a strong mission and a cohesive, urgent company culture. This stance has become a point of pride for the European tech ecosystem.
However, Lovable’s journey has not been without recent controversy. In November, the company faced public scrutiny for not paying Value-Added Tax (VAT) on its services within the European Union. Osika acknowledged the issue on LinkedIn, committing to rectify the situation while simultaneously closing comments on his post that criticized the EU’s tax environment as challenging for high-growth startups.
The vibe-coding sector remains a focal point for venture capital, with Lovable’s funding news following a similar pattern seen elsewhere. For instance, competitor Cursor raised $2.5 billion in November at a $29.3 billion valuation, also marking its second major funding round of the year. These back-to-back mega-rounds underscore the competitive intensity and high stakes in the AI-powered development tools market, where companies are racing to define the future of how software is built.
(Source: TechCrunch)
