Swedish AI start-up Lovable is taking the world by storm with 100,000 new projects per day

The company, founded just a year ago, has raised $228 million (€210 million) in funding so far, including a $200 million funding round this summer that valued the company at $1.8 billion (€1.66 billion). Rumors among investors have already indicated interest in a new investment at a valuation of $5 billion (€4.6 billion), but Osika insists the company is not financially constrained and is not disclosing new funding plans.

Sustainability of growth and challenges

Lovable uses a free and paid subscription model, and in June it hit $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). However, doubts have been raised about the sustainability of the so-called “vibe coding” trend – data from Barclays and Google Trends shows that traffic on the platform fell by 40% in September after peaking at the start of the year. But Osika says user retention remains strong, with net revenue growth of more than 100% per user.

From open source to global platform

Lovable grew out of the open-source GPT Engineer project. “I realized that we could democratize software development with this technology,” Osika said. Today, the platform is used by more than half of Fortune 500 companies, and it allows even complete beginners to code – from an 11-year-old from Lisbon who created a Facebook clone to a Swedish couple who run a $700,000 (€645,000) annual startup on the platform.

Lovable also faces security issues. After an incident in which an app built with AI tools leaked thousands of images with GPS data, the company has stepped up its hiring of security engineers. Osika says he wants to make building apps with Lovable “more secure than hand-coding.” The platform now performs multi-stage security checks before release, and recommends the involvement of cybersecurity experts for sensitive apps (such as banking).

Competition and vision of the future

Although Lovable uses models from OpenAI and Anthropic, which are also developing their own coding assistants, Osika sees an opportunity. “If we can amplify human creativity and enable anyone with good ideas to build companies, it’s a win-win,” he says. The company’s goal is to create “the last piece of software” — a platform where everything a company needs to develop can be done through a simple interface.

For Osika, a former physicist and the first employee at Sana Labs, Lovabl's success is the result of a simple principle: "Don't write memes - show a demo." With this, he wants to change the way companies develop ideas - from PowerPoints to instant prototypes.