Lovable has become one of the clearest signs that vibe coding is moving beyond a novelty. The Swedish AI coding app is pitching itself as a broader product-building platform, especially for founders and people without coding experience.
At TechBBQ in Copenhagen’s Bella Center, co-founder Anton Osika described a company trying to turn AI-assisted software creation into a full workflow. His message was direct: Lovable wants to help users move from idea to working product, while staying flexible in a market where larger AI companies are also building developer tools.
Lovable’s fast rise in vibe coding
Lovable helps users build apps and websites by guiding AI models that produce code, sites and applications. That puts the company inside the fast-growing category known as vibe coding, where users describe what they want and AI systems help generate the software.
The company’s growth has made it a standout. In just eight months, Lovable said it surpassed $100 million in ARR. It also raised a $200 million Series A at a $1.8 billion valuation, making it Europe’s fastest-growing unicorn.
Investor interest appears to have continued. The Financial Times reported that investors are already hoping to launch a Series B, with potential deals that would value Lovable at $4 billion. The source article says there is no indication so far that Lovable is interested.
Lovable says it now has more than 2.3 million active users, including 180,000 paying subscribers. Osika said pricing was chosen by looking at what would help the company cover its own costs.
From first drafts to full products
Osika’s ambition is broader than helping someone generate a quick prototype. He told TechCrunch he wants Lovable to become the best place to build software products, particularly for founders building AI-native companies.
That means Lovable is aiming at more than code generation. Osika described business needs such as payments, understanding users and, in the future, possibly helping with company incorporation.
“I want Lovable to help with all these things.”
In late June, Lovable released an agent that can help users read files, debug errors, search the web, generate images and locate files. In the company’s larger strategy, that agent is an early step toward making Lovable feel less like a code generator and more like a product development partner.
Osika pointed to use cases that show the range of users Lovable wants to serve. His examples included a marketer building a sales training platform and an engineer running multiple small businesses on the platform.
“In the past, you could create a really great first draft using Lovable. Now you can build a full product, and it’s much more like working with a real developer,” he said.
Why the CEO is not focused on model-company rivals
AI-generated code has faced criticism for being brittle and more useful for demos than finished products. Osika’s response is that review is necessary either way. He told TechCrunch that all code should be reviewed before publication, “whether it is AI or human-generated.”
Lovable currently runs on foundation models from other companies, including Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s GPT-5. That creates an obvious tension: Anthropic and OpenAI also offer their own product-development services, Claude Code and Codex.
Those products are not exactly the same as Lovable, but they could become more direct competitors if model providers choose to shift strategy. Osika does not appear especially concerned. His argument is that Lovable can use many AI model providers, while providers need to rely on their own models.
“That puts us in a better position than them,” he said.
According to Osika, combining different foundation models gives Lovable users “unmatched capabilities” and helps the company grow without carrying duplicative infrastructure. He said the scope of what users can achieve is constantly expanding, while Lovable’s team is focused on remaining fast, secure and easy to use.
“If we continue to do that, we’re going to build more trust with our customers than anyone else,” he said. “Simple as that.”
Europe is part of the Lovable story
Lovable is closely connected to the Swedish and wider European tech scene. Osika grew up in Stockholm and founded the company there. According to PitchBook, the investor list includes Stefan Lindeberg, Fredrik Hjelm, Greens Ventures, Hummingbird Ventures and 20VC.
Other investors and clients also underline the company’s European ties. Revolut CEO Nik Storonsky is an angel investor. Swedish founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski is also an angel investor, and Klarna is a Lovable client. Other well-known clients include HubSpot and Photoroom.
At the conference, investors and founders discussed what Lovable staying in Europe means for the Nordic startup ecosystem. Shamillah Bankiya, a principal at the U.K.’s Dawn Capital, told TechCrunch that Lovable’s success and the success of other European AI unicorns matter beyond the companies themselves.
“The success of Lovable and other European AI unicorns is a success for all of Europe,” said Shamillah Bankiya.
She added that the larger impact is cultural, because it raises expectations for what ambitious founders across the continent can imagine and build.
Osika said Lovable plans to remain based in Europe, although it has a team in Los Angeles that makes up roughly 6% of the company. The source article notes that many European tech companies eventually move toward the United States for capital and opportunity, but Osika does not see Lovable doing that for now.
A signal for the Nordic startup ecosystem
Lovable’s momentum is also beginning to feed into other startups. Osika has started investing in founders himself. Dennis Green-Lieber’s Danish customer intelligence company, Propane.ai, received an investment from Osika as part of its $1.2 million pre-seed round.
Green-Lieber said Lovable reinforces what many in the Nordic scene already believe: that the region has world-class talent and can compete globally. He pointed to companies such as Zendesk, Unity, Klarna and Spotify, while arguing that Lovable shows a category-defining company can still be built with small teams, a global mindset and intense effort.
For Lovable, the challenge now is execution. The company has users, revenue momentum, major investor interest and a clear narrative. Its bet is that a product-first layer on top of multiple AI models can remain valuable even as the model companies build more tools of their own.