Lovable, the app

If you have never heard of Lovable, you are not alone. But the Swedish software startup just pulled in $400 million in Series C funding at a $13.3 billion valuation, doubling its worth since December. That kind of money, and that kind of growth, tends to get people’s attention.

Lovable is a “vibe-coding” platform. The idea: you describe what you want an app to do in plain English, and the software builds it for you. No coding required. The company says 60 million projects have been created on its platform, and apps built with Lovable now attract 900 million monthly visitors. Those numbers have exploded since the company’s Series B round in December, when it had 25 million projects and 200 million monthly visits.

For people in Northeast Philadelphia and everywhere else who have ever had a small-business idea but no way to build the technology behind it, this is the pitch: Lovable wants to be the place where anyone can turn a concept into working software, cheaply and fast.

Who put up $400 million and why

Menlo Ventures led the round, returning after also leading the December Series B, which raised $330 million at a $6.6 billion valuation. The Scaleup Europe Fund, managed by private equity firm EQT, co-led the Series C. That fund is part of Horizon Europe, a program that supports companies developing critical technologies.

The investor list is global. Lovable said new backers include Balderton Capital and Carmignac from Europe, Kaszek Ventures and LTS Growth from Latin America, Tencent and World Innovation Lab from Asia, and Regent from the United States. Returning investors include Accel, Antler, CapitalG, DST Global, Evantic Capital, HubSpot Ventures and Salesforce Ventures. CapitalG had co-led the Series B.

TechCrunch reported that Regent, one of the new investors, is the investment firm that also owns TechCrunch itself.

Revenue growth that caught Wall Street’s eye

Lovable told TechCrunch it hit $500 million in annualized run rate revenue in June. The company said it has quadrupled its annual recurring revenue over the past 12 months and nearly tripled ARR in the eight months since the Series B alone.

In June, the startup signed a multiyear deal with Google Cloud representing a fivefold increase in usage, TechCrunch reported. Lovable also offers its own in-house trained AI model alongside the usual frontier model options and has backed other European startups, including Danish company Atech, which builds vibe-coding software for tech hardware design.

Fortune 500 adoption and small-business builders

Within its first year, Lovable said it reached employees at half of the Fortune 500. That figure has since grown to nearly two-thirds. Companies like Adidas, NVIDIA and Deutsche Telekom are using the platform to create software around critical workflows and replace tools that no longer serve them.

But the company’s pitch is not just aimed at big corporations. Lovable’s own user survey data shows nearly eight in 10 users are building a business or side project they hope to monetize, and more than one-third of those are already earning revenue.

The case studies are striking. A UK serial founder named Lex Deak built a fashion discovery app called WNTD using Lovable, saving £25,000 to £30,000 every month and closing a £3 million funding round. In Brazil, Rafael Milagre built the systems behind his AI education company, Viver de IA, with Lovable. That 54-person company serves more than 1,200 clients and is on track for R$100 million in revenue this year. In the U.S., Nursa’s VP of Product built a new enterprise product for nursing schools in a single weekend with the platform.

What started as a faster way to prototype has become an important tool for building internal products that support how our teams work.

That is Jorge Luthe, senior director of product at Zendesk, describing how the company uses Lovable for internal training tools and a roadmap application.

Not everyone is sold. Senior tech buyers surveyed on the platform Qualitate described Lovable as strong for rapid prototyping and citizen development but said teams hit a wall when requirements mature. Some users said they plan to replace Lovable due to scalability limitations and concerns that security is not robust enough for complex workflows.

Lovable appears aware of these criticisms. Since the Series B, the company has rolled out automatic and scheduled security scanning, earned AIUC-1 certification (described as the first security standard for AI agents), and added governance and visibility features including publishing controls and workspace insights. It has also deepened integrations with Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Stripe and ElevenLabs, and added payment functionality and SEO tools.

The company laid out three priorities in its Series C announcement. First, it wants to make the platform more proactive, understanding what users are trying to achieve and helping carry out the work without waiting to be prompted. Second, it plans to train its system on what success looks like, using aggregate patterns from millions of projects to improve outcomes for every builder. Third, it aims to grow to roughly 450 team members this year, hiring most heavily in machine learning, product, infrastructure and security roles.

Lovable will keep its center of gravity in Stockholm while expanding in London, Boston, San Francisco and New York.

The broader question is whether a platform that lets anyone build software can hold its ground as general-purpose AI coding tools from companies like Anthropic and OpenAI keep improving. Some observers on LinkedIn predicted Lovable could eventually follow the path of Airtable, with an exit years from now at a valuation below where it is raising today. Small apps, the argument goes, will be absorbed into general-purpose AI agents, while complex apps will still require real engineering teams.

For now, the numbers are hard to argue with. A $13.3 billion valuation, $500 million in annualized revenue, 900 million monthly visits. Whether Lovable can keep that trajectory going as the AI landscape shifts underneath it is the question worth watching.

I cover what the internet is actually talking about: the new release, the viral moment, the creator beef, the product launch. My job is to explain it fast and clearly, without the breathless hype. I read the timeline…