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Glenn Kaonang · · 7 min readEmergent promises to finish what Lovable and Bolt left undone
Vibe coding tools promise to let anyone build an app. In reality, platforms like Cursor and Claude Code are built with developers in mind, while Lovable and Bolt tend to stop at mockups rather than full deployments.
US-based Emergent is going the opposite way by designing its platform so that even total beginners can build production-ready apps. The company says around 70% to 80% of its 1.5 million registered users are people with no technical background or are semi-technical.
Image credit: Arsal Ysfin
This approach has resonated with investors. Emergent recently closed a US$23 million round led by Lightspeed, with participation from Y Combinator, Together Fund, and angel investors like Google’s chief scientist Jeff Dean.
Emergent says that it has reached US$15 million in annual recurring revenue from 25,000 paying users. It has done so with the platform launching in June and with only 14 engineers on staff.
While the company has shown early traction, it faces the same problem as its peers: heavy reliance on costly AI models, pressure to retain users in the long run, and rivals that could pivot into the same space.
Building beyond mockups
Emergent co-founder and CEO Mukund Jha argues that rival platforms fall short on catering to non-technical users because they don’t handle back-end development seamlessly.
He points to Lovable and Bolt, which require users to connect to third-party services like Supabase for database management, whereas Emergent’s agent builds and manages the database infrastructure directly within its platform.
“Most platforms don’t have these strong coding agents behind the scenes. A lot of them are just recycling what Claude is giving and putting it out there,” Mukund tells Tech in Asia.
Emergent co-founders Mukund Jha (left) and Madhav Jha / Photo credit: Emergent
Prior to Emergent, Mukund was the CTO of Indian delivery startup Dunzo, which ceased operations earlier this year. He left before Dunzo’s closure and founded Emergent in August 2024 with his twin brother, Madhav Jha, who now serves as the company’s CTO after his stint at Dropbox.
With Emergent, the idea is to offload the entire development lifecycle to the platform’s AI agents. This includes tasks like testing and debugging as well as hosting, API calls, and other back-end components required to deploy a fully functioning app.
See also: Will the rise of vibe coding bring on Vietnam’s next unicorn?
A business model under pressure
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Emergent enables non-technical users to build and deploy apps with its platform. But can that pitch help it hold its ground in a crowded space?
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