Vibe Coding Tool Replit Doubles In Valuation To $3 Billion

Forbes

19 hours ago

Doha , Qatar - 26 February 2024; Amjad Masad, Co-founder & CEO, Replit on Centre Stage during the opening night of Web Summit Qatar 2024 at the Doha Exhibition and Convention Center in Doha, Qatar. (Photo By Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile for Web Summit Qatar via Getty Images) Sportsfile via Getty Images
Artificial intelligence coding company Replit has just raised $250 million in a new funding round that values it at more than $3 billion marking another big raise for the startups powering 'vibe coding'.
The new round will be led by Prysm Capital and will likely see the valuation of the Bay Area startup double in just over two years, according to sources close to the company. The funding represents a significant jump from the $1.16 billion valuation that Replit hit in April 2023 after raising $97 million.
In the past few years large language models have evolved beyond just writing lines of code and can now turn a simple written instruction into working apps or websites. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently claimed that as much as 30% of the company's new code is written by AI. Earlier this month, Google paid $2.4 billion to poach key executives from Windsurf, a developer-focused AI coding tool. That company's main rival Cursor leapt to a $10 billion valuation in a funding round in June.
Replit's cofounder and CEO Amjad Masad announced in June that the Bay Area-based startup had reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) less than a year after the launch of its AI coding tool. The company's rivals have also seen explosive growth with Swedish startup Lovable telling Forbes earlier this month that it had racked up $100 million in subscriptions in just eight months from its own launch.
The vibe coding boom has triggered a flurry of interest from investors in the space with Lovable raising $200 million in a round led by Accel, and Bay Area rival StackBlitz landing a $80 million founding round in January. Bloomberg had previously reported that Replit had been in talks to raise at a $3 billion valuation.
Replit and Prysm Capital both declined to comment.
Though Replit now claims to have served over 30 million users, it's hardly an overnight success story. The company was established back in 2016 by former Facebook engineer Masad, and his cofounders, to build an online platform to support collaborative coding. The company didn't launch its AI code writing tool until September 2024. But it hit $10 million ARR by the end of that same year, according to Masad.
Still, there have been a few hiccups. Investor Jason Lemkin recently claimed that Replit's AI went 'rogue' and deleted the code base for a project he had spent two weeks building. 'I know vibe coding is fluid and new...But you can't overwrite a production database,' he said on viral X post. 'Possibly worse, it hid and lied about it.'
Masad replied that this was 'unacceptable and should never be possible,' and Replit was taking steps to add safeguards to the platform. Replit declined to comment further.
A bigger challenge for Replit and its vibe coding rivals are tech giants like Google and Microsoft and the large model builders like Anthropic that currently power their code writing tools muscling into their market. Google has its own platform, Firebase Studio, while Amazon released its own tool Kiro earlier in July and Anthropic is now selling access directly via Claude Code.
Lemkin is still using Replit for now. 'They all use the same model from Anthropic,' The SaaStr investor told Forbes. ' I have slowed everything way down in general. I'm vibe coding at 20% of the speed as before all this.'
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