Lovable hits $6.6B valuation as AI funding splits between code tools and edtech

CNBC reported on 16 December that the round includes U.S. venture firm Accel and, according to one source, Khosla Ventures. Both sources asked to remain anonymous because the deal is private. Lovable, Accel and Khosla Ventures had not responded to CNBC's requests for comment when the article was published. CNBC notes that Forbes had reported in November that the round would value Lovable at "around" $6 billion. The final figure, if confirmed, would be more than triple the $1.8 billion valuation the company reached after its previous round closed in July. That July raise brought in $200 million, with Accel joined by Creandum, Klarna founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski, ElevenLabs founder Mati Staniszewski and Synthesia founder Victor Riparbelli.

It is Lovable's third funding round of 2025.

Three rounds in one year

The company was founded in 2023 and is based in Stockholm. It is now opening offices in Boston and San Francisco. Its platform leans on AI models from providers including OpenAI and Anthropic to let users build apps and websites from text prompts, with no coding knowledge required. That category, vibe coding, has drawn heavy investor attention over the past year. The revenue numbers behind the valuation are striking. Lovable reported $200 million in annual recurring revenue in November, less than a year after it first reached $1 million in ARR. At the time it announced those figures, the company said 100,000 projects were being built on its platform every day. CNBC describes it as Europe's leading player in the space and one of the continent's most valuable startups.

Accel's involvement is not a one-off. The firm backed Lovable's previous round and has become a prominent investor across the new wave of AI startups, according to CNBC. It has taken part in billion-dollar rounds for Cursor, the coding tool built by Anysphere, and for Thinking Machines, the AI company founded by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati. That pattern of a single investor appearing across several of the sector's largest deals is now common at the top of the market.

The comparison set is expensive

Lovable's new price tag sits inside a cluster of very large rounds. Anysphere raised $2.3 billion at a $29.3 billion valuation in November, CNBC reports. Replit reached a $3 billion valuation in September after picking up $250 million. Vercel closed a $300 million round at a $9.3 billion valuation. All three compete, directly or indirectly, for the same developers Lovable is courting.

"Venture capital flows reflected a shift from volume to intention," HolonIQ wrote in a February 6 post, looking back at 2025.

Not every corner of startup funding is enjoying the same treatment. Edtech has moved in the opposite direction, and the contrast is hard to miss. Global edtech investment peaked at $16.7 billion in 2021, when lockdowns kept millions of children out of classrooms. By 2025, venture capital going into the sector had fallen to less than $3 billion, according to Tracxn, a Bengaluru-based platform that tracks global startup funding. Most of that money comes from U.S. venture firms, Tracxn's data shows. The founder pipeline has narrowed alongside the money. Just 645 edtech companies were launched in 2025, compared with almost 10,500 in 2020, according to Rest of World's report on the collapse. For-profit startups in the sector struggled to differentiate from rivals and to fix weak unit economics, the report says, citing an analysis by Loot Drop, a database of more than 1,700 startup closures. High customer acquisition costs, long institutional sales cycles and low retention rates tied to murky learning outcomes have all weighed on the sector.

Where the edtech money went

HolonIQ, a research firm that advises governments and investors on education, argued in a February analysis that capital is now flowing toward AI tools and training platforms that help companies hire, cut costs and teach workers new skills. The firm pointed to AI-enabled products, workforce-aligned platforms and K-12 operations tools that address cost or staffing pressures.

Some of the biggest names in the sector have already been reshaped. Byju's, once the world's most valuable education startup at $22 billion, collapsed under a financial crisis and aggressive sales tactics for expensive courses. Nigerian startup Edukoya shut down in 2025, citing weak profitability and waning investor support. In China, the government's "double reduction" policy in July 2021 crushed the K-12 online education sector, and Yuanfudao, once valued at $15.5 billion, ended its core tutoring services and pivoted to AI hardware. It is now among the top six players in China's AI learning hardware market, alongside rival Zuoyebang, according to Rest of World.

The two stories share a mechanism rather than a theme. Capital is concentrating in products that look like infrastructure for the next wave of AI work, and it is leaving categories that cannot show a clear path to efficiency or retention. Lovable's pitch fits the first group. K-12 tutoring largely does not. Loot Drop's analysis concluded that corporate workforce development, professional certification prep and specialized skill acquisition for high-income careers are more promising than K-12 general education.

One thing the Lovable round does not yet have is confirmation from the company. The valuation rests on two anonymous sources, and neither Lovable nor its investors had commented when CNBC published. The Register reported separately that anonymity and unverified claims can travel a long way once they are published: a lawsuit filed in July alleges that Koi Security, now owned by Palo Alto Networks, published an AI-generated threat report that falsely linked video startup MeetingTV to a Chinese espionage operation. Palo Alto Networks told The Register it was aware of the lawsuit and expected the dispute to be resolved through the legal process.