Replit wants to democratize software development in the era of AI and vibe coding. Interview with Michele Catasta, president and head of AI, who details his ambition to JDN.
JDN. Last June, Replit claimed 40 million users and more than 150,000 paying customers. How do you explain this growth, particularly since the launch of Agent3? ?
Replit’s mission has never changed since our founding in 2016: to become the platform for the next million software creators. We’ve always wanted to enable people without a coding background to build apps. With generative AI, we have been able to capitalize on the infrastructure built in recent years to achieve this, notably with Agent3, the latest version of our agent, launched in September 2025. We mainly target knowledge workers, who represent 75% of our users. The remaining 25% are developers of varying levels, from beginner to professional. Thanks to their expertise, they often know what questions to ask the agent and thus get the most out of it.
How does Replit stand out from other platforms specializing in AI-assisted development?
Our advantage is to have developed not only the agent that generates the code, but also all the infrastructure necessary to put software into production. This mastery of the entire technological stack is undoubtedly what differentiates us the most. Because software development is not just about writing code. Professional developers know this well and generally spend only a quarter of their time coding. The rest is spent on deployment, security, connecting to data sources, storing and backing them up, etc. Without this vertical integration, each user could build their database differently or manage permissions in their own way, and the agent would end up dysfunctional.
Between Cursor, which is aimed at expert developers, and Lovable, designed for non-coders and the creation of rapid prototypes, where do you stand exactly?
I would say that we position ourselves between these two categories of actors. Tools like Cursor or Windsurf target experienced developers to increase their productivity. On the other hand, others like Lovable or Bolt allow you to quickly create landing pages or simple prototypes. With Agent3, we want to provide the best of both worlds, making the experience as simple as possible, based on natural language, while still offering capabilities as advanced as Cursor. Obviously, reconciling these two aspects sometimes involves compromises, but the market potential is enormous in this in-between. Our users don’t want to limit themselves to prototypes, they want to create real tools, including internal applications for their companies. This is also where we experience our strongest growth.
How are your users divided between individuals, start-ups and large companies?
We cover the spectrum, from small businesses and SMBs to large Fortune 500 companies. Some use Replit to automate certain tasks. We offer an all-in-one solution that simplifies the lives of non-technical users, including prototyping, development, deployment and even database management. For larger businesses, we offer advanced features specific to their needs.
Do you have examples of companies that have used Replit to develop internal tools?
Of course. I can give you the example of a hotel chain that paid several hundred thousand dollars per year for a SaaS room reservation solution. The company itself rebuilt an equivalent tool on Replit for a development cost of a few hundred dollars. Everything is now hosted and deployed on Replit, including database management.
I can also give you the example of Zillow, an American site specializing in real estate. One of their colleagues had an idea to optimize the matching system between real estate agents and buyers. Lacking technical skills, he built a prototype on Replit. Zillow then adopted this method, allowing it to generate tens of millions of dollars in additional annual recurring revenue in just a few months. This product still works on Replit today.
After a round of 250 million of dollars, made in September 2025, at a valuation of 3 billion dollars, Replit would target 1 billion in turnover at the end of 2026. Is the company profitable today ?
We could be profitable tomorrow if we wanted, by changing our product pricing for example, but in this ultra-growth phase that we are experiencing, that is not our objective. We have specifically raised several funds to invest further in our growth. That said, we have always been rigorous. For example, we have not touched the money raised during our Series C last September, nor that of our Series B. We have good margins, particularly on the corporate target. Obviously, AI is a sector where costs are high and it is not easy to display margins comparable to some B2B SaaS companies. However, we are experiencing very strong growth, both in terms of revenue and adoption of our product.
Can you really create a complex application just by writing prompts?
We’re not there yet. There is a lot of media buzz around vibe coding, which has undoubtedly helped everyone in the industry grow. Part of it is, perhaps, due to inflated expectations of the capabilities of these platforms. As is often the case, the truth lies in the middle. These tools do much more than many people expect and surprise many users. However, they are not yet ready to allow you to build a technology company valued at several tens, or even hundreds of billions of dollars. However, if you extrapolate the progress in AI made over the last decade, it is not entirely incoherent to imagine that this could be the case in the years to come.
Where do you see Replit in five years?
In five years, our company, which has around a hundred employees today, will undoubtedly have reached a much larger scale. I hope our AI agent will be used by the majority of large companies around the world, especially those with a strong connection to the web and technology. We will also be able to offer a more affordable offer for individuals. We want Replit to become as essential a productivity tool as Excel.
Over the past four decades, more than a billion people have used Excel. Replit is a much more flexible and easy to use tool. Today, users import Excel spreadsheets into Replit and ask, in natural language, our agent to analyze the data and create a dashboard for them. There are over 1.5 billion knowledge workers worldwide and we want Replit to become their productivity tool. I think we are on the right track to achieve this.
Michele Catasta is President and Head of AI at Replit, a US-based AI-assisted development platform. He notably led the creation and launch of Replit Agent in 2024. Previously, he led applied research at Google Holder of a doctorate in computer science from EPFL, Michele is also an investor, with more than a hundred investments in the AI sector.
