Every seat in Copenhagen’s Bella Center was packed when Anton Osika took the stage at TechBBQ 2025.
The 35-year-old CEO had just achieved something unprecedented: his company Lovable reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue in just eight months — faster than OpenAI, Cursor, Wiz, and every other software company in history.
Now investors are circling with offers that would value the Swedish startup at $4 billion, just weeks after it became Europe’s fastest-growing unicorn at a $1.8 billion valuation.
The Vibe Coding Gold Rush Is Real — And Everyone Wants In
The AI coding space has exploded since February 2025, when OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy coined the term “vibe coding.”
It’s a simple concept with massive implications: instead of writing code, you just describe what you want in plain English.
The AI does the rest.
According to Stack Overflow, 80% of developers now use AI tools in their workflows.
But here’s what’s wild: Lovable isn’t even targeting developers.
“If you’re running a business, there are a lot of things you want to set up, like payments, understanding your users, and in the future, maybe even like ‘I need to incorporate my company,’” Osika told TechCrunch in Copenhagen. “I want Lovable to help with all these things.”
Inside the Numbers That Have Silicon Valley Buzzing
The growth metrics are staggering.
2.3 million active users.
180,000 paying subscribers.
10 million projects created.
100,000 new projects every single day.
All with just 45 full-time employees working out of Stockholm.
Why Osika Isn’t Losing Sleep Over the Competition?
The vibe coding space is getting crowded fast.
California’s Anysphere (maker of Cursor) just raised $900 million at a $9.9 billion valuation. Replit is reportedly in talks for a $3 billion round. Even Jack Dorsey jumped in, using Block’s AI to create Bitchat over a single weekend.
Plus, there’s an elephant in the room: Lovable runs on models from Anthropic and OpenAI — companies that have their own coding products (Claude Code and Codex).
So why isn’t Osika worried?
“That puts us in a better position than them,” he explained to TechCrunch.
The reason is strategic: while model providers are locked into their own technology, Lovable can cherry-pick the best AI models for each task.
“The scope of what you can achieve is constantly expanding,” Osika said. “Simple as that.”
The Swedish Tech Renaissance Is Just Beginning
Lovable’s success story is lighting a fire in the Nordic startup ecosystem.
The company’s investor list reads like a who’s who of European tech: Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski (whose company is also a Lovable client), Revolut CEO Nik Storonsky, and Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield.
“Yes, we’ve had giants like Zendesk, Unity, Klarna, and Spotify over the past decade,” Dennis Green-Lieber, founder of Danish startup Propane.ai, told TechCrunch. “But what Lovable shows is that with small teams, a global mindset, and relentless effort, you can still build a category-defining company.”
The Origin Story: Three Weekends and Too Much Coffee
The path to unicorn status started with frustration.
After co-founding e-commerce startup Depict.ai (which he left in late 2023), Osika saw the potential of ChatGPT’s API for code generation.
“I’d been talking to people about this, and I felt no one was truly sufficiently imaginative to what I was thinking about,” he revealed on Lenny’s Podcast. “I had to prove a point.”
He flew back to Sweden, downed some coffee, and built the first version over three weekends.
Originally called GPT Engineer, it was open-source and rough around the edges.
“Finally, when we thought the product was really good, we said, ‘OK, now we have a lovable product,’” Osika explained.
The name stuck.
What Makes Lovable Different (And Why It Matters)
While competitors focus on helping developers code faster, Lovable is playing a different game entirely.
The platform handles the entire stack — front-end, back-end, database, deployment — everything.
In June, they released an AI agent that can read files, debug errors, search the web, and generate images. According to Osika, it reduces error rates by 91%.
Major companies are already building real products on the platform. A Brazilian edtech company grossed $3 million in 48 hours with an app built on Lovable. Clients include HubSpot, Photoroom, and Osika’s former company, Klarna.
The Talent Philosophy That’s Disrupting Silicon Valley Wisdom
Osika’s approach to hiring is unconventional — and it might be his secret weapon.
“I think experience can be a negative thing in some cases,” he told The Twenty Minute VC podcast. “You often want people who are super ambitious, they have a lot to prove, and they are more open-minded toward how you should work.”
This philosophy extends beyond Lovable.
In a recent interview with Business Insider, Osika argued that AI has fundamentally changed what matters in tech hiring.
“The leverage has moved,” he said. A computer science degree “isn’t useless” but it’s no longer the golden ticket it once was.
The $4 Billion Question: What’s Next?
Financial Times reports that investors are already circling with Series B offers that would value Lovable at $4 billion.
So far, there’s no indication the company is interested.
“As long as we are listening to our users and giving them what they need, that’s all that matters,” Osika said when asked about competition from Figma (which recently IPO’d at $19.3 billion).
The vision is bigger than just code generation.
Osika wants Lovable to become “the last piece of software that anyone has to write” — a platform that takes founders through every stage of building an AI-native company.
Why This Matters Beyond the Hype?
The vibe coding revolution isn’t just about making programming easier.
It’s about democratizing software creation entirely.
When a marketer can build a sales training platform or an engineer can spin up multiple businesses without writing code, the entire software industry shifts.
Critics point to concerns about code quality and security. One expert noted that Jack Dorsey’s Bitchat contained “hallmarks of vibe code (in)security.”
But Osika remains unfazed.
“All code should be reviewed before it is published,” he said, “whether it is AI or human-generated.”
The Bottom Line
Lovable’s meteoric rise proves that in the AI era, the winners won’t necessarily be the biggest models or the most funded companies.
They’ll be the ones who understand how to orchestrate multiple AI systems to create something genuinely useful.
With $100 million ARR, 2.3 million users, and a CEO who’s more focused on product than PR, Lovable might just be building the future of software development.
And they’re doing it from Stockholm, not Silicon Valley.
That alone should make the competition nervous.
