DearThe Stockholm-based AI coding platform is closing in on 8 million users, a big jump from the 2.3 million active users number the company shared in July, CEO Anton Osika told this editor during a sit-in on Monday. Osika said the company — which was founded about a year ago — was “built on the darling of 100,000 new products every single day.”

The metrics suggest rapid growth for the startup, which has raised $228 million in total funding to date, including a $200 million round this summer that values ​​the company at $1.8 billion. Rumors have swirled in recent weeks — possibly sparked by his own investors — that new backers want to invest at a $5 billion valuation, though Osika said the company is not capital-constrained and declined to discuss fundraising plans.

Speaking to me from the stage at the WebSummit event in Lisbon, Osika didn’t share another number in particular: LOVABLE’s current annual recurring revenue. The company, which uses a mix of free and paid tiers, hit $100 million in ARR this June, a milestone it hit publicly. But questions have since arisen as to whether the web coding boom is sustainable.

Research Data from Barclays this summer, along with data from Google Trends, showed that traffic has declined for some horticultural services, including Dear and Versal’s V0, after a peak earlier this year. According to analysts at Barclays, traffic was down 40% as of September.) “This traffic raises the question of whether app/site vicoding has already taken off or is already slowing down a bit before interest rises,” he reportedly wrote in a note to investors.

Still, Osika insisted that retention is strong, citing net retention of more than 100 percent — meaning consumers spend more over time. He also said the company “just passed” the 100-employee mark and is now importing leadership talent from San Francisco to bolster its Stockholm headquarters.

Pyari, emerged from GPT Engineer, an open-source tool created by Osika that went viral among developers. But he says he quickly realized there was a big opportunity with the 99% of people who didn’t know how to code. “I woke up a few days after I built the GPT engineer and realized, look, we’re going to reimagine the way you build software,” Osika said. “I built a bike at my co-founder’s place, and I said, I think this is a great idea. I woke him up.”

The platform has attracted an eclectic user base. According to Osika, more than half of the Fortune 500 companies are using Pear to “supercharge creativity.” At the same time, he said, an 11-year-old from Lisbon built a Facebook clone for his school, while a Swedish duo is making $700,000 a year since launching on the platform seven months ago.

Osika credits what he describes as a Swedish design sensibility, saying, “What I hear from people who love it is, ‘It just works.’

Security remains a thornier issue for the web coding sector. When I brought up a recent incident in which an app built with Vibe coding tools leaked 72,000 photos into the wild, including GPS data and user IDs, Osika acknowledged the problem.

“The part of the engineering organization where we’re moving faster in hiring is security engineers,” he said. “In fact, he said, Dear now runs multiple security checks before users can deploy, even though the platform still requires users to build sensitive applications — for example — to hire security experts, as they would with traditional development.”

Osika was similarly matter-of-fact when I asked about the competition from OpenEye and Entropic, AI giants whose models love power but have also released their own coding agents. He sees the market as big enough for multiple winners. “If we can unlock more human creativity and human agency. [and] Build a business on top of that, it should be celebrated, regardless of who does it. “

This is a decisive collective stance in an industry known for (Even Osaka has done some lighting Social Media Spring (with Amjad Massad of Rival Copy.) But he said his focus right now is on creating “the most intuitive experience for humans” rather than obsessing over rivals.

Osika described Pyare’s mission as creating the “ultimate piece of software”—a platform where everything a product organization needs, from understanding users to deploying mission-critical features, can be done through a simple interface.

“Demo, don’t memo,” he said, a popular phrase among product leaders, captures how companies now use cute. Employees can now quickly prototype instead of writing long presentations, then test them with early users before committing resources.

For all the attention from Hypergrowth and investors, Osika—dressed simply in a beige T-shirt and matching button-down, floppy hair framing his face—appeared unfazed. 30 Some former particle physicists, formerly employed at Sona Labs before becoming beloved founders, have become must-go conference guests in a rapid succession from open-source developer to venture-backed founder. Yet he was more interested in discussing European work culture than in his company’s path or sudden attention.

“What I care about is that everybody that’s in the company, they’re mission-driven, they really care about what they’re doing and how we’re succeeding as a team,” he said, pushing back against Silicon Valley’s fast-paced culture. “The best people on my team today, most of them, are their kids, and they really, really care about what we’re doing. They’re not working 12 hours a day, six days a week.”

Although he added: “It’s a start though, so they’re probably doing more than most jobs.”