Lovable, a Swedish tech startup, has secured $7.5 million in pre-seed funding to expand its AI-powered platform that allows anyone to create software, regardless of technical background.
The funding round was led by Hummingbird, a prominent investor known for backing Anima and Andrena Ventures, and byFounders, which has supported startups like Monta and Rig.dev. The round also saw participation from leading angel investors, including Deepmind operators, Shopify’s Siavash Ghorbani, and Voi’s Fredrik Hjelm, as well as Creandum co-founder Stefan Lindeberg.
Lovable, founded by entrepreneurs Anton Osika and Fabian Hedin, is pioneering a tool called GPT Engineer.
Their goal is simple but ambitious: make software creation accessible to everyone, addressing a skills gap in an industry worth $4.7 trillion and growing by 20% annually.
This AI-driven software enables non-technical users to generate production-ready code for websites and web apps in real time. The tool offers instant feedback and helps users iterate quickly, going beyond prototypes to produce fully functional applications.
Lovable’s vision is rooted in addressing a critical gap in the tech industry: the shortage of skilled software developers. According to Firat Ileri, Partner at Hummingbird, the demand for software far outweighs the available talent. “Lovable is entering the market at a crucial time,” Ileri said. “Their GPT Engineer is the only solution that allows non-technical people to produce the same results as seasoned software engineers. This could trigger unprecedented levels of innovation.”
Lovable recently launched the beta version of GPT Engineer, and the response has been remarkable. Within hours, the platform garnered hundreds of paying users and reached the front page of Product Hunt and Hacker News. It has already collected 75 five-star reviews, a testament to the product’s real-world effectiveness. Additionally, the open-source CLI version of the tool has attracted over 52,000 GitHub stars, with more than 27,000 people on the waitlist for the full release.
Anton Osika, Lovable’s co-founder, explained that the company aims to expand coding capabilities to the wider population. "We want to move beyond the 1% of people who currently know how to code," he said. "Our tool is already helping users like Simon, who created the first version of his SaaS startup, and Katrin, who’s pursuing new business ideas after developing a sophisticated application.”
With its fresh injection of capital, Lovable plans to bolster its team by attracting top European talent, many of whom are International Olympiad in Informatics gold medalists and former scaleup operators. The funds will also be used to enhance its computing resources and further refine its data collection methods.
With GPT Engineer, Lovable is leading the charge toward a future where anyone can build and deploy their own applications, regardless of their technical expertise.
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