Lovable, the Stockholm-based AI coding platform, is rapidly nearing 8 million users, CEO Anton Osika revealed during a sit-down on Monday—a significant increase from the 2.3 million active users the company reported in July. He noted that the company—founded nearly a year ago—now sees “100,000 new products built on Lovable every single day.”
This surge reflects remarkable growth for the startup, which has so far raised $228 million in total funding, including a $200 million round this summer that valued it at $1.8 billion. In recent weeks, rumors have circulated—reportedly sparked by some of its investors—that new backers are eyeing a $5 billion valuation.
Speaking at the Web Summit event in Lisbon, Osika refrained from disclosing Lovable’s current annual recurring revenue (ARR). The company, which operates on a mix of free and paid tiers, reached $100 million in ARR this June—a milestone it celebrated publicly. Still, questions have surfaced about whether the current “vibe coding” trend can sustain its momentum.
According to Barclays research and Google Trends data released this summer, traffic to several popular coding services, including Lovable and Vercel’s v0, has dropped since peaking earlier in the year. The Barclays analysts noted that Lovable’s traffic fell by 40% as of September, writing, “This waning traffic begs the question of whether app/site vibecoding has peaked out already or has just had a bit of a lull before interest ramps up.”
Nevertheless, Osika maintained that retention remains strong, pointing to a net dollar retention rate above 100%, meaning users are spending more over time. He also mentioned that the company recently crossed the 100-employee mark and is now bringing in leadership talent from San Francisco to strengthen its Stockholm headquarters.
Lovable originated from GPT Engineer, an open-source tool Osika built that quickly went viral among developers. He soon realized the larger opportunity lay with the 99% of people who don’t know how to code. “I woke up a few days after building GPT Engineer, and I realized, look, we’re going to reimagine how you build software,” Osika said. “I biked to my co-founder’s place, and I said, ‘I have this great idea. I woke him up.”
The platform has since attracted an incredibly diverse user base. According to Osika, more than half of Fortune 500 companies use Lovable to “supercharge creativity.” At the same time, an 11-year-old in Lisbon built a Facebook clone for his school, and a Swedish duo now earns $700,000 annually from a startup they launched just seven months ago using Lovable. “What I hear from people trying Lovable is, ‘It just works,’” Osika said, attributing this success to Swedish design sensibility.
However, security has emerged as a key concern for the vibe coding sector. When asked about a recent incident in which an app built with such tools leaked 72,000 images, including GPS data and user IDs, Osika acknowledged the seriousness of the issue.
“The part of the engineering organization where we’re moving the quickest on hiring is security engineers,” he said. His goal is to make development with Lovable “more secure than building with just human-written code.” He added that the platform now runs multiple security checks before deployment, although developers of sensitive apps—such as those in banking—are still required to engage their own security experts.
When questioned about competition from OpenAI and Anthropic—the AI giants powering Lovable’s models and building their own coding agents—Osika responded calmly, noting that there is room for multiple players. “If we can unlock more human creativity and human agency . . . and just drive the change so that anyone can create if they have good ideas and build businesses on top of that, that should be celebrated, regardless of whoever does that.”
Despite the competitive landscape—and occasional social media sparring with rivals like Amjad Masad of Replit—Osika said his focus is on creating “the most intuitive experience for humans” rather than obsessing over competitors.
He described Lovable’s mission as building “the last piece of software”—a platform where every aspect of product creation, from user understanding to feature deployment, happens through one simple interface. According to Osika, the platform enables teams to adopt the “demo, don’t memo” philosophy, allowing them to prototype and test ideas quickly instead of preparing lengthy presentations.
Despite the company’s hypergrowth and rising investor attention, Osika appeared calm and grounded. Dressed casually in a beige T-shirt and button-down, the former particle physicist—who was Sauna Labs’ first employee before founding Lovable—now finds himself a regular on major conference stages. Yet, he remains focused on culture and purpose rather than hype.
“What I care about is that everyone who’s at the company isreally cares about what they’re doing and how we as a team succeed,” he said, rejecting Silicon Valley’s intense hustle culture. “The best people in my team today, most of them, have kids, and they really, really care about what we’re doing. They’re not working 12 hours, six days a week.” He paused and added with a smile, “Although it’s a startup, so they’re probably working more than most jobs.”
