## OpenAI's Monumental Valuation Leap

OpenAI has finalized a deal to sell employees' shares to investors, valuing the **artificial intelligence company** at an astounding **$500 billion**. This valuation was confirmed by two anonymous sources familiar with the agreement.

With this agreement, OpenAI now holds the title of the **world's most valuable privately held company**, surpassing **SpaceX**, the rocket firm founded by Elon Musk, according to data from the startup tracker **CB Insights**.

### Key Deal Details

Current and former employees of OpenAI agreed to sell approximately **$6.6 billion in shares** to investors. Major participants in this transaction include the Japanese conglomerate **SoftBank** and the venture capital firm **Thrive Capital**.

![An image of OpenAI's app in front of a keyboard.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/10/02/multimedia/02biz-openai-valuation-qlvk/02biz-openai-valuation-qlvk-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)
*OpenAI's valuation has jumped repeatedly over the last 12 months. Credit: Dado Ruvic/Reuters*

With the agreement, OpenAI becomes the world’s most valuable privately held company, surpassing the rocket maker SpaceX.

OpenAI Shatters Records with $500 Billion Valuation, Becoming the World's Most Valuable Private Company

![Almost 60% of young people in the U.K. are interested in starting their own businesses, per the Generation Entrepreneur Report.](https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image/108206877-1759396669646-gettyimages-2097109502-stew07452.jpeg?v=1759419418&w=1858&h=1045&vtcrop=y)

Young Brits are catching flak for their apparent lack of entrepreneurial drive, sparking a broader debate on whether the **UK startup scene is facing an ambition deficit**.

It started when **UK Business Secretary Peter Kyle** criticized British university students for lacking the same interest in starting a business as their American peers. "In Britain, if you went to a group of undergraduates, how big would that group have to be before you found someone that said their choice of going to university…was because they wanted to become a founder?" Kyle said at an event hosted by AI chipmaker Nvidia in London. "The entrepreneurialism simply isn’t there – the drive, the vigour."

He’s not alone; the tech and startup scene in the UK is often viewed as lacking the same intensity and speed as its counterparts in the US and China. It’s led some venture capitalists to suggest that European founders need to work harder and adopt the rigorous **"996" work schedule** — 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week — infamous at China’s tech companies.

## Risk Aversion

The stereotypes are not necessarily backed up by the data, however. Almost **60% of young British people were interested in starting their own business**, according to a recent study conducted by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) and Simply Business of 2,079 people between the ages of 18 and 34 in the UK. However, only 16% of them actually took the leap into entrepreneurship, with most citing a **lack of formal business education** as holding them back.

"There’s definitely a large appetite to explore entrepreneurship from a very young age," Dama Sathianathan, senior partner at Bethnal Green Ventures, told CNBC Make It. "It’s just getting really hard to show ambition when **the system is rigged against you** … You don’t have the right supportive infrastructure to be able to tap into money, to really have the drive to aim high."

Bristol-based entrepreneur Tom Wallace-Smith made Forbes 30 under 30 in Europe last year — but he said entrepreneurship feels out of reach to most people in the UK. "From people’s public perceptions, the whole track of Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg feels quite mythological to people, it’s totally out of someone’s reach," Wallace said in an interview with CNBC Make It.

Wallace, who co-founded nuclear fusion startup Astral Systems in 2021 while finishing a PhD in nuclear physics at the University of Bristol, said he initially didn’t know that entrepreneurship was a viable career path, and expected to end up in a big company or become an academic. He argued that the UK has no shortage of successful entrepreneurs, but the government and media "could do a better job of telling founders’ stories" and increasing exposure to startup environments.

A lot of people in the UK see entrepreneurship represented via comedic reality TV shows like The Apprentice or Dragons’ Den, Wallace-Smith said, and are lacking role models. "It’s more about making fun of them rather than championing them." The FSB and Simply Business survey found that 15% of young current or aspiring entrepreneurs said that seeing others succeed would boost their confidence, but over a third hadn’t received any guidance or support from local entrepreneurs or businesses.

![Young people are choosing corporate careers over starting a business because it’s too risky.](https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image/108205826)

Harry Stebbings, venture capitalist and founder of the 20VC podcast, puts some of the blame at the door of **"risk-off" British parents**, with the instability surrounding entrepreneurship making it an unattractive career path. Instead, Stebbings — who’s a champion of the 996 work week — said young people seem to aspire to work at corporate firms like Goldman Sachs and McKinsey.

## ‘Here with Gritted Teeth’

Astral System’s Wallace-Smith said many UK entrepreneurs aren’t seeing enough "direct incentive" to scale and grow in the UK as opposed to the US — indicating that it’s largely a **structural issue** that’s fueling the entrepreneurship deficit. "The ones that are left in the UK are here with gritted teeth, like by hook or by crook, to make sure that we have success in the UK because I just care about the country and I want to see this succeed here… It’s more of an outlier than the standard," he said.

Atomico’s State of European Tech 2024 identified a **talent leakage to the US**, with at least 800 companies that could have been founded in Europe instead being established across the Atlantic. It also found that established startups trying to scale up past the seed funding stage tend to struggle to secure investment. In fact, twice as many US companies — 8.3% — raise rounds of $15 million or more, compared with Europe’s 4.1%.

> "If you’re faced with continuously having to struggle, why would you choose to struggle on this entrepreneur path?"
> Dama Sathianathan, Senior Partner at Bethnal Green Ventures

Additionally, half of European companies have turned to the US to secure a lead investor since 2015, according to the report. Although risk appetite continues to exist among British entrepreneurs, it doesn’t for investors, Sathianathan said, noting that **VCs in the UK don’t want to risk their money**.

Damian Routley, a chief operating officer at venture studio and startup accelerator Founders Factory, said the financial incentives for founding a company as a young person are "increasingly weak" with tax reliefs for both entrepreneurs and investors diminishing since the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The lifetime allowance for Business Asset Disposal Relief (BADR) has been slashed from £10 million ($13.45 million) to £1 million, while Capital Gains Tax (CGT) rates have risen, leaving founders with smaller payouts when they sell their companies. "This all means it’s harder to take the plunge and launch a business than to go for the safety of a PAYE grad job," he told CNBC Make It.

Meanwhile, some early-stage funding incentives are considered generous, but are focused on investors, leaving many startups struggling to secure the capital they need to grow. "It’s a structural issue, which then seeps into it becoming a cultural issue, because if you’re faced with continuously having to struggle, why would you choose to struggle on this entrepreneur path?" Sathianathan added.

## ‘Europe’s Premier Startup Hub’

It’s not all doom and gloom, though, as the UK remains **"Europe’s premier startup hub,"** Routley said. In 2024, £9 billion was invested into venture-backed businesses in the UK, maintaining the country’s position as the third-largest VC market behind the US and China, according to the British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association’s Venture Capital in the UK 2025 report.

Various incubators and accelerators have also been set up to encourage young people to go into business. Alongside Founders Factory, others include SETsquared, UCL’s Hatchery, and Techstars. Additionally, 20VC’s Stebbings recently launched Europe’s equivalent of the Thiel Fellowship — a program which gives $200,000 to young people under the age of 22 who want to build innovative startups. Alumni of the US program include billionaire Lucy Guo to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

Stebbings’ Project Europe, backed by 128 different founders from firms including Klarna, Mistral and Soundcloud, is a fund which will award 200,000 euros ($234,684) to select founders who are 25 years old or younger. However, the UK’s House of Lords’ Communications and Digital Committee warned earlier this year that the UK is at risk of becoming an **"incubator economy"** — as ideation remains strong, but the ability to scale and grow remains weak.

"If we can’t solve our pathways to capital markets and incentivise sovereign IP [intellectual property] to stay here, then we risk losing our best companies to better structured regimes with greater liquidity potential," Routley said. "The ambition is there, but the ladder is missing a few rungs."

"The ones that are left in the U.K. are here with gritted teeth, like by hook or by crook," one founder told CNBC Make It of Britain's entrepreneurs. 

Is the UK's Startup Scene Rigged Against Entrepreneurs? Founders and VCs Reveal the Shocking Truth

## OpenAI's Strategic Acquisition of ROI

In a bold move to **strengthen its foothold in the financial sector**, OpenAI has acquired the investing app startup **ROI** and hired its CEO and co-founder, **Sujith Vishwajith**, to join its technical team. This acquisition signals OpenAI's deepening commitment to integrating AI into finance, leveraging the expertise from ROI to enhance its capabilities.

### Impact on ROI and the Market

Following the acquisition, ROI announced it will **shut down its app**, redirecting its resources and talent towards OpenAI's projects. This decision underscores the strategic nature of the deal, focusing on internal development rather than maintaining the standalone product.

### Broader Trends in AI and Finance

Since the early days of **ChatGPT**, major financial institutions like **J.P. Morgan** and **Morgan Stanley** have adopted the AI-powered chatbot to assist employees with financial queries. Additionally, consumers are increasingly relying on such tools for a wide range of financial tasks, highlighting the growing intersection of AI and everyday finance.

This acquisition could pave the way for more **innovative AI applications in investing and financial services**, potentially transforming how businesses and individuals manage their finances.

 OpenAI has bought investing app startup ROI and hired its CEO and co-founder, Sujith Vishwajith, to join its technical staff, a spokesperson for the ChatGPT maker said. ROI said it will shut down the app. 

 Since ChatGPT’s early days, financial firms such as  J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley  have used the AI-powered chatbot to answer employees’ financial questions, and consumers use it for all

OpenAI's Secret Move: Acquires Investing App Startup ROI, Hires CEO to Supercharge AI in Finance

![Naveen Rao](https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/HnMyFwyyUh38iVCYjVH27g--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTgwMDtjZj13ZWJw/https://media.zenfs.com/en/techcrunch_finance_785/443233c9bc90a0551bd7a4ddf509ee56)

*Image Credits: Naveen Rao*

## The Rise of a New AI Hardware Challenger

**Naveen Rao**, the former head of artificial intelligence at Databricks, is in advanced discussions to raise **$1 billion** at a staggering **$5 billion valuation** for his new startup, **Unconventional, Inc.**, according to four sources familiar with the matter. The company is developing a revolutionary type of computer designed to compete directly with **Nvidia**.

## Major Backing from Top-Tier Investors

**Andreessen Horowitz** has committed to leading this massive investment round, with participation from **Lightspeed** and **Lux Capital**, two sources confirmed. While these VC firms haven't commented publicly, the involvement of such prominent names signals strong confidence in Rao's vision. Additionally, **Databricks** is reportedly investing in the new venture, as Bloomberg previously revealed.

## Aggressive Funding Strategy

Rao has already secured **hundreds of millions** in initial funding and plans to begin operations without waiting for the full $1 billion to close. The remaining capital will be raised in installments through a **tranched funding round**, allowing for flexible capital deployment as the company scales.

## Vision for Revolutionary AI Computing

Although Rao declined to comment directly, he publicly acknowledged the startup on X, describing its ambitious goal: "rethinking the foundations of a computer to build a new substrate for intelligence that is as efficient as biology. Brain Scale Efficiency without the biological baggage!" This suggests a focus on creating **highly efficient AI systems** that mimic biological intelligence.

## Proven Track Record in AI Innovation

Rao's previous startup, **MosaicML**, was acquired by Databricks in 2023 for **$1.3 billion**. Founded in 2020, MosaicML specialized in training and deploying large AI models and had raised $33.7 million from investors including Lux Capital, DCVC, Playground Global, and Samsung Next. Before that, Rao co-founded **Nervana Systems**, a machine learning platform acquired by Intel in 2016 for over **$400 million**.

## Departure from Databricks to Focus on New Venture

Rao recently left his role as VP of AI at Databricks, a company now valued at **$100 billion** with $4 billion in annual recurring revenue, to dedicate himself fully to Unconventional, Inc. His departure and the startup's formation were first reported by Bloomberg last month.

## Direct Competition with Nvidia

Sources indicate that Rao's vision involves designing a **novel AI machine** that integrates both **custom silicon chips** and **server infrastructure**, positioning it as a direct competitor to Nvidia in the AI hardware space.

Former Databricks AI chief is raising $1 billion to build an Nvidia rival through a novel approach.

Naveen Rao's Secret AI Hardware Startup Aims for $5B Valuation to Challenge Nvidia's Dominance

**Cerebras Systems Inc.**, a prominent player in **artificial intelligence computing** and chip manufacturing, has officially withdrawn its registration for an **initial public offering (IPO)**. This move comes over a year after the company first announced its intentions to go public.

In a recent filing with the **Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)**, Cerebras stated that it does not plan to proceed with the IPO as outlined in its previous documents. The filings had not yet been declared effective, allowing for this withdrawal without immediate market impact.

This development raises questions about the future strategies of **AI startups** in the rapidly evolving tech landscape, especially those focused on **high-performance computing** and data center operations.

Cerebras Systems Inc. has filed to withdraw paperwork for an initial public offering more than a year after publicly unveiling plans.

AI Chip Giant Cerebras Shocks Market by Withdrawing IPO Plans – What's Next?

## Supabase's Meteoric Rise

It's been a whirlwind year for **Supabase**, the **vibe-coding world's database of choice**. On Friday, Supabase announced it raised a fresh **$100 million Series E** at a **$5 billion valuation**, led by **Accel** and **Peak XV**. This milestone comes just **four months after closing its $200 million Series D at a $2 billion valuation**, also led by Accel.

![Supabase co-founders, Ant Wilson, Paul Copplestone](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Supabase-Ant-Wilson-Paul-Copplestone.jpg?w=1024)

### Rapid Fundraising Timeline

- **Series D**: $200 million at $2 billion valuation (April 2025)
- **Series C**: $80 million led by Peak XV and Craft Ventures (September 2024) - PitchBook estimated a post-money valuation of around **$765 million**

In total, Supabase has raised **$380 million in just one year**, with a **more than 500% valuation increase** assuming PitchBook's Series C estimates are accurate. The company has now raised a total of **$500 million**.

### Origins and Growth

**Open source database service Supabase** was founded in 2020 by **CEO Paul Copplestone** and **CTO Ant Wilson**. It started as a **Y Combinator startup** offering developers a **Postgres-based open source alternative to Google's Firebase**. Supabase combines **Postgres** with other enterprise-grade open source tools for features like:
- **Authentication**
- **Auto-generated APIs**
- **File storage**
- **Vector toolkit** (essential for many AI apps)

Supabase simplified setting up a database to just a few clicks, making it a popular backend for **vibe-coding tools** that write apps with natural language prompts. It's increasingly used as the database of choice for:
- **Figma**
- **Replit**
- **Cursor**
- **Claude Code**
- **Lovable** and **Bolt**

### Community Involvement

Because Supabase is **open source** and supported by a community of developers—claiming **4 million developers as users**—the company is allowing **community members to buy stock** as part of this Series E funding.

It's been a wild year of growth and fundraising for vibe-coding database of choice, Supabase.

Supabase's Valuation Skyrockets to $5 Billion in Just Four Months - Here's How They Did It

## Groq's Rapid Data Center Growth

AI startup Groq is aiming to establish **more than twelve data centers** next year, according to CEO Jonathan Ross.

The company has already set up **12 data centers this year**, and wants to top that figure, as reported by the [Wall Street Journal](https://www.wsj.com/business/ai-unicorn-groq-charts-data-center-expansion-plan-5d6a130e).

During an interview, Ross said that people should "expect that [number] to grow rapidly."

## Global Expansion and Success Factors

Thus far, Groq has a presence in the **US, Canada, the Middle East, and Europe**, with plans to establish data centers in **Asia**. According to Ross, the company has seen a lot of success in Asia - particularly **India** - which he puts down to Groq's ability to produce and deploy chips faster, and their **lower power usage than GPUs**.

Speaking on the company's demand, Ross said: "Every time we overcompensate by trying to build more, people surprise us by needing even more than we built."

## Partnerships and Infrastructure Details

Groq is a known customer of **Equinix data centers**, having leased capacity at a facility in [Helsinki, Finland](https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/groq-leases-space-at-equinix-data-center-in-helsinki-finland/), earlier this year. Elsewhere, the company has a presence in the US (Equinix and DataBank), Canada (Bell Canada), and Saudi Arabia ([Humain](https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/humain-turns-to-groqs-inference-chips-for-saudi-arabian-ai-push/)).

In [February 2025](https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/groq-secures-15bn-from-saudi-arabia-to-expand-ai-inference-infrastructure-in-the-region/), Groq secured **$1.5 billion in investment from Saudi Arabia** to expand AI inference infrastructure in the country. The funding will be used to support the expansion of Groq’s existing data center in Dammam, which will support the development of the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority’s (SDAIA) Arabic Large Language Model, **ALLaM**.

## Funding and Company Background

Last year saw the company closing a [$640m](https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/groq-closes-640m-funding-round-hires-meta-and-former-hp-and-intel-execs/) funding round. Led by **BlackRock**, the round also saw participation from Neuberger Berman, Type One Ventures, Cisco, KDDI, and Samsung Catalyst Fund. According to the WSJ, Groq was most recently valued at **$6.9bn**.

Groq was co-founded in 2016 by Ross, who previously helped lead **Google's Tensor Processing Unit development**. The company provides dedicated chips and accelerators within its own servers and racks designed for **artificial intelligence, machine learning, and high-performance computing**.

Company has already set up 12 data centers in 2025

Groq's Ambitious AI Expansion: Over a Dozen New Data Centers Coming in 2026

## The Long Road to Success

While AI coding startups like **Cursor** raise eyebrow-raising rounds in just three years, **Replit's** journey to a **$3 billion valuation** has been anything but swift. For CEO **Amjad Masad**, who's been building tools to democratize programming since 2009, it's a story of muscling through multiple failed business models, years stuck at the same revenue plateau, and a reckoning last year that forced him to cut half his staff.

That makes what happened next more remarkable. Earlier this month, the Bay Area-based company closed a **$250 million funding round** led by Prysm Capital, nearly tripling its valuation from 2023. The raise came on the heels of never-before-seen revenue growth for the company — from just **$2.8 million last year to $150 million in annualized revenue** in less than a year. But for Masad, this moment represents something more than finally realizing financial traction. It's the culmination of a **16-year obsession**.

## A Mission to Create a Billion Programmers

"Our mission has always been the same," Masad said. "Initially, we said we want to make programming more accessible, and then we sort of upped the ante a little bit. We said we're going to **create a billion programmers**."

It's purposely audacious, but it's also something that Masad, a Palestinian-Jordanian, has been working toward for his entire career. He came to the United States in 2012 after his open-source coding project began gaining attention, including catching the eye of the New York Times. He'd been making programming more accessible since building his first online coding experience back in 2009, with his work as an early engineer at **Codecademy** kicking off what became the massively online open courses (MOOC) revolution.

## Years of Struggle and Pivots

Still, turning that vision into a viable business of his own proved a lot harder than he anticipated. Replit was founded in 2016, and for eight long years, the company struggled to find **product-market fit**. "We had reached that $2.83 million [in annual recurring revenue] back in '21, maybe," Masad recalled. "And so this is how painful it's been. We've been hovering around the same revenue for like four or five years."

The company tried selling to schools ("incredibly difficult," Masad noted), cycling through different business models, and watched each one stabilize around the same modest revenue level.

Along the way, Replit built sophisticated infrastructure for **cloud development environments** and "multiplayer coding," collaborative editing akin to Google Docs but for programming. But the technical achievement wasn't translating into revenue growth, and by last year, with the company at 130 employees and burning through cash, Masad said he had to make a painful decision. "I looked at our burn, and I looked at our progress on our revenue chart, and it just didn't make any sense. The business wasn't viable." Replit cut its headcount by **50%**, bringing it down to around 60 to 70 people at its lowest point.

## The Breakthrough with Replit Agent

Then came the breakthrough.

Last fall, Replit launched **Replit Agent**, which Masad calls "the first agent-based coding experience in the world" that can't just write code but "debug it, deploy, provision the database for you, just act as a true software engineering partner."

Soon after, in January of this year, he announced that Replit was **abandoning professional developers** as its core market.

"Hacker News was really unhappy," Masad acknowledged. But he also hasn't looked back, completely moving away from competing in the crowded market of tools for professional developers – where companies like Cursor, **GitHub Copilot**, and others are battling it out – to instead focus on creating a billion software developers from white-collar employees with no technical background.

"The idea of making programming more accessible to the average individual, to the knowledge worker, really, that's where we think our market is," Masad explains. "It's a **fundamentally new market**."

## Rapid Growth and Validation

Right now, that bet looks very smart. Numerous reports this summer said that revenue at Replit had grown to over **$150 million in annualized revenue** and Masad hinted that it's now even higher. He also said that unlike many AI-powered coding companies, Replit is **gross margin positive**. On enterprise deals, which make up an increasing share of revenue, margins are "80% to 90%," according to Masad.

It's hard to verify such a claim, but Replit's market position received some validation this week when Andreessen Horowitz released its first **AI Spending Report** in partnership with fintech firm Mercury. Analyzing transaction data from Mercury, the report tracked the top 50 AI-native application layer companies that startups are actually spending money on. While major labs OpenAI and Anthropic took the top two spots, **Replit landed at No. 3**, outranking every other development tool.

Profitability is rare in AI coding because many competitors face what Masad calls "the **negative gross margin trap**." The reality is that serving professional developers with AI assistance can be compute-intensive. Counterintuitively, Replit's focus on non-technical users – who might seem like they'd require more AI assistance – works in their favor on the business model front for enterprise customers like **Zillow, Duolingo, and Coinbase**, which pay $100 per seat, plus usage-based pricing built on top.

## Learning from Setbacks

This new path hasn't been without some faceplants. In July, venture capitalist **Jason Lemkin** went viral after the newest version of Replit's AI agent deleted his production database with 100-plus executive contacts, fabricating 4,000 fake records afterward and later admitting to Lemkin that it "panicked." (There is a failure mode in AI agents called **reward hacking**, where models become so obsessed with achieving a certain goal that they effectively cheat when they miss the mark.)

Rather than becoming defensive, Masad and his team owned the problem. In fact, says Masad, within two days, they rolled out an automatic safety system that separates a user's "practice" database from their "real" one. The way Masad describes it, it's a little like having two versions of a website's filing cabinet — the AI agent can experiment freely in a development database, but the production database, which is the real thing that users interact with, is completely walled off.

Masad told me the incident ultimately put the company on stronger footing, given the problems around safety and security it needed to figure out — and fast. "If you solve hard problems, then you have a **technology moat**," he said. (Lemkin, for his part, says he has become a super user of Replit despite having no technical background just months ago.)

## Ongoing Challenges and Future Plans

Still, even now, Replit isn't out of the woods. If anything, its success has painted a target on its back. To wit, the company — which now employs 110 people — still faces an existential threat from the very AI labs whose models power its platform: **Anthropic and OpenAI**. Both companies have launched their own coding tools that compete directly with companies like Replit and Cursor, and these foundation model companies can afford to subsidize their coding tools and post-train their models on their own products, optimizing performance in ways that third-party platforms might always struggle to replicate.

Replit's advantage, according to Masad, lies in targeting **non-technical users** rather than professional developers, plus the sophisticated infrastructure around deployment and database management that it has built and which foundation model companies still don't prioritize (for now).

Plus, Replit has another unusual advantage for a startup: a **$350 million war chest**. Despite raising $100 million in 2023, the company "hadn't touched" those funds by the time it raised this latest round, Masad told me. The company is capital efficient by design, though Masad joked that as an entrepreneur who grew up watching his refugee father struggle, "one thing I need to learn is to be less frugal and start spending money."

Whether that edge keeps Replit ahead of competitors is an open question, and it's one about which Masad is mindful. Right now, the plan is to scale operations, accelerate product development, and pursue acquisitions — both acqui-hires and potentially companies working on agent automation in specific verticals. But for Masad, who appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast in July and has seen his company's fortunes transform, the moment is bittersweet. When asked how it feels to be receiving so much attention – not to mention that $3 billion valuation – he invoked the adage that "this too shall pass. This might mean that when you're in a bad situation, that'll pass, but we're also in a good situation that will pass."

It's a stoic response from someone who spent the better part of a decade working away at the same revenue level, convinced that AI agents would eventually transform programming but unable to prove it to the market. But one major difference between Replit and the wave of AI coding startups now flooding the market is that Masad has lived through multiple hype cycles and has he emerged with something relatively differentiated – and reportedly profitable.

"I've learned to be a little stoic," he said. "What matters is for us to do the right thing, be principled, and move forward."

While AI coding startups like Cursor raise brow-raising rounds on barely three years of existence, Replit's path to a $3 billion valuation has been anything but swift.

OpenAI Shatters Records with $500 Billion Valuation, Becoming the World's Most Valuable Private Company

Summary:

OpenAI's Monumental Valuation Leap

Key Deal Details

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Supabase's Valuation Skyrockets to $5 Billion in Just Four Months - Here's How They Did It

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How Replit's 16-Year Grind Led to a $3 Billion AI Coding Breakthrough