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.
In the latest news from the vibe-coding bonanza: SpaceX said on Tuesday that it struck a deal with AI coding startup Cursor that could give it the option to acquire the company for $60 billion or pay $10 billion for their collaboration. The partnership grants Cursor access to SpaceX’s resources, including its massive Colossus supercomputer, and also strengthens SpaceX’s position in the AI coding race by helping it compete with top labs building advanced coding tools.
That deal is just the latest in a broader wave of acquisitions and partnerships sweeping through the vibe-coding space.
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.
Yet, the rise of these tools is also rattling the broader market: Some tech giants saw their shares take a hit as investors dumped 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 in March, announcing his company’s $9 billion valuation.
Business Insider compiled a list of the startups riding the vibes, detailing their latest valuations, fundraises, and what they’re best known for.
Lovable
Lovable CEO Anton Osika. Bruno de Carvalho/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
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.
In March, Business Insider reported that the Swedish startup’s annual recurring revenue had surged by more than 30%, from $300 million to $400 million in a single month. ARR, a key metric used 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 Insiderthat 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.
Replit
Replit CEO Amjad Massad. Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile for Web Summit Qatar via Getty Images
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.
In March, the startup announced it had raised a $400 million Series D round at a $9 billion valuation, led by its previous investor, Georgian Partners. Other investors include Coatue, Andreessen Horowitz, Craft Ventures, Accenture Ventures, and angels Shaquille O’Neal and Jared Leto.
Emergent
The YC startup was founded by twin brothers. 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 said in February that it had 6 million users and had reached $100 million in ARR in eight months.
Its latest funding round, raised in January, 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
Eiso Kant is Poolside’s cofounder and tech chief. JOEL SAGET/AFP via Getty Images
San Francisco-based Poolside was cofounded in 2023 by former GitHub head of tech Jason Warner and software entrepreneur Eiso Kant. The company focuses on selling to enterprises and public sector organizations. It builds models that can write computer software and coding applications.
In October, Bloomberg reported that the company was in discussions to raise $2 billion at a $12 billion valuation, with a potential $500 million to $1 investment from Nvidia.
The company closed a $500 million Series B in 2024, led by Bain Capital, with participation from Nvidia, a Poolside representative told Business Insider. It is raising a Series C, and Nvidia has committed at least $500 million to anchor the round.
Correction: March 13, 2026 — An earlier version of this story misstated Poolside’s headquarters. The company is based in San Francisco, not Paris.
StackBlitz’s Bolt
StackBlitz cofounders Albert Pai (left) and Eric Simons (right). Eric Simons
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 $83.5 million at a $700 million valuation.