All posts tagged: vibe coding

Google Play now supports private, vibe-coded apps built just for you

Google Play now supports private, vibe-coded apps built just for you

Published by skeptic

Your vibe-coded applications can now be easily run on Android smartphones without having to first go public on the Google Play Store, the tech giant announced on Tuesday. A new feature will allow users to launch their own personal apps on their device via Google Play using their standard Google account, but they will remain completely private. These personal apps won’t show up in Google Play’s search or listing pages, and won’t be shared with anyone except for the app’s creator. The idea comes as more people are experimenting with building their own applications via AI for specific, personal needs. However, being able to use that app on their own Android device has meant publishing to Google Play, making it accessible to the Play Store’s some 3 billion users. That led many to limit their vibe-coding efforts to web apps that could run on any device instead of something built natively for Android. Now, Google says Android device owners can vibe code an app using Google AI Studio, then launch it for their own use. …

Some Supabase customers are publicly exposing reams of people’s data to the web

Some Supabase customers are publicly exposing reams of people’s data to the web

Published by skeptic

Thousands of databases hosted by development platform Supabase are exposing people’s sensitive information to the public web, new security research by cybersecurity firm UpGuard has found. UpGuard told TechCrunch that it found around 16,000 databases on which some degree of personal data was exposed while they were hosted by Supabase, which allows web and app developers to store and run their databases. Supabase earlier this year reached a $10 billion valuation, thanks to a rise in developers hosting their vibe-coded apps on the platform. But the company has faced criticism for how it handles user security. There are widely documented cases of users misconfiguring or unknowingly exposing their databases to the broader internet, in some instances to the tune of millions of records each. The findings highlight how vibe-coded apps and websites can spill or expose sensitive data through basic misconfigurations and improper security. While AI tools can be used to easily build websites and apps, the generated code can often contain security flaws, or apps might require specific configuration that the developer may be …

Cognition CEO denies report that SpaceX tried to acquire the startup

Cognition CEO denies report that SpaceX tried to acquire the startup

Published by skeptic

Elon Musk’s SpaceX attempted to acquire AI coding startup Cognition as it works to catch up to OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google in the AI race, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the matter. Cognition CEO Scott Wu disputed the report soon after it published, writing on X that the story was inaccurate and that Cognition “is not for sale,” adding that the two companies haven’t been in talks. The report comes a few days after SpaceX’s $60 billion acquisition of Cursor, another AI coding startup, whose deal closed last week.  SpaceX acquired Musk’s AI company, xAI, earlier this year. It then went public in a blockbuster IPO in June, with its market capitalization rising to nearly $2.3 trillion at its peak. SpaceX has sold investors on its AI ambitions, which include eventually building data centers in space. But the xAI business remains relatively early-stage and has fallen behind competitors. It’s also had to contend with its chatbot Grok’s penchant for controversy, including last year’s “MechaHitler” incident and this year’s nonconsensual sexual imagery scandals, as …

AWS is helping vibe-coding startup Superblocks, and the implications are big

AWS is helping vibe-coding startup Superblocks, and the implications are big

Published by skeptic

Vibe coding startup Superblocks announced a multi-year joint marketing agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS) that enables its tool to be embedded within the private clouds of AWS customers. That means an enterprise on AWS that subscribes to Superblocks will be able to offer vibe coding to the company’s business users, and those apps will not send data or information externally to model providers or databases. The apps will spin up Amazon Aurora databases within the company’s private cloud, not, for instance, create external Supabase databases, the vibe-coding database of choice. The apps will also integrate with Amazon Bedrock, the cloud giant’s AI app development/AI gateway/inference platform. Essentially, these apps will automatically fall under IT’s management and security, rather than be rogue applications. “We’re going to bring it to your data inside your private cloud,” Superblocks co-founder and CEO Brad Menezes tells TechCrunch of vibe coding. “The big thing about that is data never leaves. … It’s their AWS account and basically secure with all of the auditing, all of the encryption, all of the …

Lovable reportedly in talks to double its valuation to .2B

Lovable reportedly in talks to double its valuation to $13.2B

Published by skeptic

Lovable, a Swedish vibe-coding startup, is in talks to raise $300 million at a valuation of $13.2 billion — exactly double the $6.6 billion valuation the company achieved last December, Sifted reported. Menlo Ventures, a firm that announced its latest $3 billion fund last month, is expected to lead the round, according to the report. The less-than-three-year-old startup hit $500 million in annualized revenue run rate in June. Lovable’s users include founders, individual designers, and salespeople building websites and e-commerce storefronts. The company also sells its vibe-coding tool to large enterprises, including Workday, Asana, and Nvidia. Vibe coding, which allows users to build software simply by describing it, is by far the most popular and lucrative use case for AI. Other high-profile vibe-coding startups include Replit, valued at $9 billion in March, and Factory, a startup that helps enterprises develop AI agents, which raised $150 million at a $1.5 billion valuation in April. Meanwhile, Cursor, which offers vibe coding for developers, was acquired by SpaceX for $60 billion last month. Source link

Corgi, the buzzy Y Combinator-backed insurance tech startup, says it didn’t steal an open source product

Corgi, the buzzy Y Combinator-backed insurance tech startup, says it didn’t steal an open source product

Published by skeptic

Y Combinator-backed insurance tech startup Corgi became embroiled in yet another controversy earlier this week when Papermark, maker of open source data room software, accused Corgi of stealing its software and passing it off as its own. Corgi denies this, telling TechCrunch. “No code was used from Papermark.” But there were reasons why people believed the initial allegation, which was made by Papermark co-founder Marc Seitz on X, concerning Corgi’s newly released product called Dataroom. Seitz’s post blew up because he shared screenshots showing Corgi’s product using the same language for the same features as Papermark’s, word for word. Deal room software is essentially secure document sharing. It is famously used by startups to pitch VCs and send them supporting materials for due diligence. Image Credits:Marc Seitz/Papermark Seitz went as far as to call Corgi’s new product copyright and license-infringing, and “fraud.” Corgi’s co-founder and CEO Nico Laqua saw the tweet and promised to investigate. Soon after, he posted on X his full denial with receipts of his own, showing that the code was different …

Lovable reportedly in talks to double its valuation to .2B

Lovable says it has hit $500M in annualized revenue, with 1 million new projects a week

Published by skeptic

Europe’s fast-growing vibe coding startup, Lovable, tells TechCrunch it has surpassed $500 million in annualized revenue run rate. Lovable last discussed its revenue in February, when the company said it crossed $400 million. In August, 2024, Lovable said it could hit $1 billion in annualized revenue within 12 months. It may not be on track to double that figure by summer, but it is still reporting jaw-dropping growth; the company, founded in late 2023, hasn’t yet hit its three-year anniversary. The company also claims it has been used to build over 50 million projects and says usage has accelerated to one million new projects a week. According to a survey of those projects that run on the company’s blog, Lovable says its users are primarily non-technical, yet are increasingly building software they intend to monetize or use in their businesses. Its users are founders, designers, and salespeople building websites and e-commerce storefronts, as well as internal tools like CRMs, inventory systems, and HR platforms, the company says. That list tells a story. AI vibe coding …

AI startup Rocket offers vibe McKinsey-style reports at a fraction of the cost

AI startup Rocket offers vibe McKinsey-style reports at a fraction of the cost

Published by skeptic

Indian startup Rocket is betting that the next big opportunity is the part before the vibe coding: having AI help people decide what to build. It has launched a platform that produces consulting-style product strategies. The startup, based in Surat, India, on Tuesday launched its platform, Rocket 1.0, which connects research, product building, and competitive intelligence in a single workflow. The platform generates detailed product strategy documents — including pricing, unit economics, and go-to-market recommendations. As AI-powered coding tools proliferate — from platforms like Cursor, Replit, and Lovable to features such as Claude Code and Codex — writing code has become significantly easier and faster. “Everyone can generate the code now… it has become a commodity. But what to build is something which everyone is missing,” said Rocket co-founder and CEO Vishal Virani (pictured above), adding that “running a business and just building a codebase are two different things.” TechCrunch briefly tested Rocket’s platform ahead of its launch and found that it generated product requirement documents in PDF format from simple prompts. These documents resemble …

Cursor has reportedly surpassed B in annualized revenue

Cursor has reportedly surpassed $2B in annualized revenue

Published by skeptic

The AI coding assistant Cursor has surpassed $2 billion in annualized revenue, a metric calculated by multiplying the latest month’s revenue by 12, according to a Bloomberg source. This individual says the four-year-old startup saw its revenue run rate double over the past three months. The disclosure appears timed to counter a recent wave of skepticism. Last week, tweets went viral questioning whether Cursor’s momentum was stalling, citing high-profile defections by individual developers to competing tools — particularly Anthropic’s Claude Code. Founded in 2022, Cursor initially sold its product primarily to individual developers. Over the last year, however, it has focused more on landing large corporate buyers, which now account for approximately 60% of revenue, according to Bloomberg. While some individual developers and smaller startups have switched from Cursor to Claude Code, which is seen as more competitively priced, that attrition seems to higher-spending corporate customers who tend to stick around longer. Beyond Claude Code, OpenAI’s coding tool Codex is also competing for share in the rapidly growing market for AI-assisted software development. Other startups …