Lovable says it has $500 million in annual revenue, with 1 million new projects weekly

Lovable, a fast-growing software startup in Europe, told TechCrunch that it has surpassed $500 million in annual revenue run rate.

Lovable last discussed its revenue in February, when the company said it had surpassed $400 million. In August 2024, Lovable said it could reach $1 billion in annual revenue within 12 months. It may not be on track to double that number by the summer, but it is still recording impressive growth. The company, which was founded in late 2023, has not yet reached its third anniversary.

The company also claims it has been used to build more than 50 million projects and says usage has accelerated to 1 million new projects per week. According to a survey of those projects running on the company’s blog, Lovable says its users are primarily non-technical, yet they are increasingly building software that they intend to monetize or use in their businesses.

The company says its users are founders, designers, and salespeople who build websites and e-commerce storefronts, as well as internal tools like customer relationship management, inventory systems, and HR platforms.

That list tells a story. AI coding platforms are seen as a threat to legacy SaaS software. Why buy expensive annuity contracts when you can just mark them up yourself? The Lovable survey seems to provide some data to suggest that this is actually happening. Of course, Lovable — and therefore most projects built on it — isn’t old enough to answer the toughest question about cryptographic software: Would such an approach be short-lived? This is because the problem is not in the initial construction part, but in the maintenance part.

Software operates almost like a living organism: even well-written, well-designed, non-AI code runs on top of an ever-changing pile of dependencies, third-party services, and infrastructure – all of which is constantly being updated, meaning the end-user’s software is always breaking. This is why many companies choose to buy rather than build. They want others to be responsible for keeping it running. We’ll have to see if Lovable and other programmers will transparently report abandoned projects as their platforms mature — aka the not-so-fun stuff. If abandonment rates are low, that will be the real indicator that the so-called SaaSpocalypse is here to stay.