The Vibe-Coding Companies and Founders to Watch in 2025

In a blog post published in early January, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman opined that in 2025, the first AI agents would enter the workforce and materially change the output of companies. Eight months into the year, it’s arguable that he’s been proven entirely correct. That’s because AI agents are the key element behind the explosive rise of vibe coding, a term coined in February 2025 by famed AI researcher and OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy to refer to the act of writing and editing code with assistance from an AI system. Karpathy posted on X that “there’s a new kind of coding I call ‘vibe coding’, where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists.” Karpathy’s post ushered in a new chapter in the AI era, with experienced developers adopting AI coding tools en masse (a recent survey from Stack Overflow found that 80 percent of developers now use AI tools in their workflows) and programming neophytes creating their first apps. This interest has sent several startups’ revenues into the stratosphere, in some cases 10xing revenue in a matter of months. And that attention isn’t just coming from customers, but investors too. This year, companies in the vibe coding space have raised billions from venture capital firms. Unlike many of the anticipated use cases for AI, vibe coding is already fundamentally changing how people interact with computers, and as such has become a focal point for the AI revolution. These are the companies and people shaping the world of vibe coding: Anthropic Anthropic has played a crucial role in the success of the vibe coding industry. The Dario Amodei-led company’s Claude AI models have proven supremely adept at handling programming tasks, and are the preferred models for many of the major players in the vibe coding space. In addition to powering other companies’ platforms, Anthropic also produces multiple vibe coding applications of its own. The first are Artifacts, which are interactive applications that can be created in Claude.ai, Anthropic’s consumer-facing platform for using its AI models. Artifacts are only meant to serve as prototypes, and Anthropic warns that the software created with Artifacts are not production-ready. Anthropic’s other vibe-coding product, Claude Code, is a program that connects directly to a user’s computer terminal, and is meant for developing full-fledged pieces of software that can be deployed and used by many people. Anysphere Anysphere, the organization behind the wildly popular AI-powered code editor Cursor, refers to itself as the fastest-growing startup in history. In early June 2025, Anysphere announced that it had raised $900 million at a $9.9 billion valuation. That’s a big jump from just six months earlier in January, when the startup raised $105 million at a $2.5 billion valuation. Anysphere was founded in 2022 and released Cursor in late 2023. Within 12 months of its launch, according to Bloomberg, Cursor was bringing in over $100 million in annual recurring revenue. Cursor uses AI models from other companies to power its code editor, and is reportedly one of Anthropic’s top customers. Like Cognition’s Devin, Cursor is known for helping software developers achieve a coding flow state. Cognition and Windsurf Cognition was one of the first companies to get into the world of AI-powered coding. The company was founded by a group of young, award-winning coders who developed a powerful software development assistant called Devin in late 2023. Devin was among the first AI-powered applications to be capable of developing an entire piece of software with nothing but a prompt to get it started. Since Devin was revealed in early 2024, Cognition has raised hundreds of millions of dollars, and is now reportedly in talks to raise over $300 million from investors at a $10 billion valuation. And now, Cognition is the owner of a former rival: Windsurf. Windsurf was originally founded as Codeium in 2021 by a pair of MIT graduates who wanted to make GPU workloads more efficient to process, but the company pivoted in 2022 after witnessing the rise of generative AI tools like OpenAI’s Dall-E. The company found success in shipping AI-powered coding extensions, and then in November 2024 released the Windsurf Editor, a virtual development environment with agentic AI built in. Windsurf immediately took off with experienced coders, who enjoyed the editor’s ability to put engineers in a kind of flow state, in which they can seamlessly work in tandem to quickly create new software. In May 2025, OpenAI reportedly had made a deal to acquire Windsurf for $3 billion, but that deal fell apart due to stipulations in OpenAI’s deal with Microsoft. Once the exclusive negotiating period had ended, Google quickly swiped the CEO and dozens of top employees. After a frantic weekend of dealmaking, Cognition announced that it would buy Windsurf, but keep it as a separate entity, with all remaining employees sticking around for the transition. Jack Dorsey The founder of Twitter and Block CEO has also been getting in on the vibe coding fun. Last month, Dorsey announced that he had used a Block-developed AI agent to create a new app, called Bitchat, that puts a twist on traditional social media. Bitchat is a peer-to-peer messaging app that uses Bluetooth to enable wireless messaging without needing an internet connection. The app essentially uses the web of connections made by Bluetooth-capable devices to create a working network. However, people quickly started pointing out potential flaws in Bitchat’s design, potentially due to its vibe-coded nature. Lovable Hailing from Sweden, Lovable is one of the few European stars of the AI revolution. Founded in 2023, Lovable is a platform that enables people of any skill level to create fully-functioning websites from natural-language prompts. According to Lovable CEO and co-founder Anton Osika, Loveable is meant to be “the last piece of software that anyone has to write.” In late July, Lovable announced that it had passed $100 million in annual recurring revenue, only eight months after making their first $1 million. This, according to the company, makes Lovable the actual fastest growing startup in the world, outpacing Cursor. The company also announced that over 100,000 projects are now being built on Lovable each day. Microsoft Microsoft’s Github Copilot is an AI-powered coding assistant built in tandem with ChatGPT creator OpenAI. Like Cursor, Github Copilot allows users to choose between various models to handle specific coding challenges and is designed for professional developers rather than novices. Still, Microsoft has been adding more agentic capabilities recently, enabling Copilot to handle more coding tasks by itself, rather than just editing small snippets at a time. On Microsoft’s most recent quarterly earnings call, CEO Satya Nadella shared that Github Copilot had hit over 20 million lifetime users, up from 15 million in April, and is now being used by 90 percent of the Fortune 100. Replit Replit is one of the older startups on this list—it was founded way back in 2016. Originally, Replit was Repl.it, a cloud-based coding environment that could be accessed from anywhere. In essence, Repl.it was like Google Docs for coding, a web-based app that enabled multiple people to collaborate on a coding project at once. In September 2024, Replit released Replit Agent, a new feature that enabled users to describe an application or piece of software in natural language, and then send an AI agent off to plan, code, and deploy the app. Replit Agent was an instant hit, and was so successful that it fundamentally changed the trajectory of the company. Once focused on catering to professional and skilled coders, Replit is now fully embracing the casual audience. In a January interview with Semafor, Replit CEO Amjad Masad even said that “we don’t care about professional coders anymore.” In the roughly 9 months since Replit Agent was launched, Masad says Replit’s annual recurring revenue has exploded from $10 million to $100 million. Theo Browne A former software development engineer for Twitch, Theo Browne has emerged as one of the most notable influencers in the fast-moving world of vibe coding. Browne releases multiple YouTube videos per week in which he gives his perspective on the latest AI headlines and experiments with new vibe coding platforms. Browne’s most popular videos include tutorials, tier lists, and comparisons between popular tools. Browne is also the founder of Ping Labs, a startup developing AI-powered tools. BY BEN SHERRY @BENLUCASSHERRY