Softr launches AI-native platform to help nontechnical teams build business apps without code

Softr, the Berlin-based no-code platform used by more than one million builders and 7,000 organizations including Netflix, Google, and Stripe, today launched what it calls an AI-native platform — a bet that the explosive growth of AI-powered app creation tools has produced a market full of impressive demos but very little production-ready business software.

The company's new AI Co-Builder lets non-technical users describe in plain language the software they need, and the platform generates a fully integrated system — database, user interface, permissions, and business logic included — connected and ready for real-world deployment immediately. The move marks a fundamental evolution for a company that spent five years building a no-code business before layering AI on top of what it describes as a proven infrastructure of constrained, pre-built building blocks.

"Most AI app-builders stop at the shiny demo stage," Softr Co-Founder and CEO Mariam Hakobyan told VentureBeat in an exclusive interview ahead of the launch. "A lot of the time, people generate calculators, landing pages, and websites — and there are a huge number of use cases for those. But there is no actual business application builder, which has completely different needs."

The announcement arrives at a moment when the AI app-building market finds itself at an inflection point. A wave of so-called "vibe coding" platforms — tools like Lovable, Bolt, and Replit that generate application code from natural language prompts — have captured developer mindshare and venture capital over the past 18 months. But Hakobyan argues those tools fundamentally misserve the audience Softr is chasing: the estimated billions of non-technical business users inside companies who need custom operational software but lack the skills to maintain AI-generated code when it inevitably breaks.

Why AI-generated app prototypes keep failing when real business data is involved

The core tension Softr is trying to resolve is one that has plagued the AI app-building category since its inception: the gap between what looks good in a demo and what actually works when real users, real data, and real security requirements enter the picture.

Business software — client portals, CRMs, internal operational tools, inventory management systems — requires authentication, role-based permissions, database integrity, and workflow automation that must function reliably every single time. When an AI-generated prototype fails in these areas, fixing it typically requires a developer, which defeats the purpose of the no-code promise entirely.

"One prompt might break 10 previous steps that you've already completed," Hakobyan said, describing the experience non-technical users face on vibe coding platforms. "You keep prompting, keep trying to fix errors that the AI generated, and you end up maintaining something you didn't even sign up for in the first place."

This critique targets a real structural limitation in how many AI app builders work today. Platforms that fully rely on AI to generate application code from scratch leave users with a codebase they cannot read, debug, or maintain without technical expertise. To connect those generated apps to real databases, login systems, or third-party services, users often must integrate tools like Supabase and make API calls — tasks that effectively require them to become developers. Softr's position is that these platforms have replaced one form of coding with another, swapping programming languages for English-language prompts that carry all the same fragility.

How Softr's building block architecture avoids the hallucination problem that plagues AI code generators

Rather than generating raw code, Softr's platform uses what Hakobyan describes as "proven and structured building blocks" — pre-built components for standard application functions like Kanban boards, list views, tables, user authentication, and permissions. The AI interprets a user's requirements, guides them through targeted questions about login functionality, permission types, and user roles, then assembles these tested building blocks in a constrained, intelligent way. Only when a user requests functionality that falls outside the standard 80% covered by these blocks does the system build a custom component with AI.

"It basically never hallucinates, because it's all built on an infrastructure that's secure and constrained," Hakobyan explained. "It doesn't generate code or leave you with code, because underneath, it uses our existing building block model."

The result is not a code repository. It is a live application running on Softr's infrastructure, with a visual editor that users can continue to modify — either by prompting the AI further or by directly manipulating the no-code interface. This dual-editing model is a deliberate design decision that Hakobyan frames as the platform's core differentiator. "It almost combines the best of both worlds of AI and no code, and really lets users to either continue iterating with AI or then continue working with the app visually, which is much simpler and easier and for them to have control," she said.

Core platform foundations — authentication, user roles, permissions, hosting, and SSL — are built in from the start, eliminating what Hakobyan calls the "blank canvas problem" that plagues vibe coding platforms, where every user must architect fundamental application infrastructure from scratch via prompts. The platform uses a SaaS subscription pricing model, with each plan including a set number of AI credits and the option to purchase more — though the visual editor means users don't always need to consume credits, since direct manipulation of the no-code interface is often faster and more precise.

Inside the five-year journey from Airtable interface to profitable AI-native platform

Softr's journey to this moment has been a gradual, disciplined expansion that stands in contrast to the rapid fundraising cycles common among AI startups. The company launched in 2020 as a no-code interface layer on top of Airtable, the popular enterprise database product. Co-founded by Armenian entrepreneurs Hakobyan and CTO Artur Mkrtchyan, the startup raised a $2.2 million seed round in early 2021 led by Atlantic Labs, followed by a $13.5 million Series A in January 2022 led by FirstMark Capital.

What happened next is notable for its restraint. Softr has not raised additional capital since that 2022 Series A. Instead, it has grown to profitability. "We have been profitable for the past whole year, and we're about 50 people team," Hakobyan told VentureBeat. "We have grown to eight-digit revenue fully PLG, no sales team, mostly through word of mouth, organic growth."

That financial profile — eight-figure annual revenue, profitable, 50 employees, no sales team — is striking in a market where many AI-powered competitors are spending heavily to acquire users. Over the past year, the company has steadily expanded its technical capabilities, moving beyond its original Airtable dependency to support Google Sheets, Notion, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, and other databases.

In February 2025, TechCrunch reported on this expansion, with Hakobyan explaining that many potential customers had "data scattered across many different tools" and needed a single platform to unify that fragmented infrastructure. Today, Softr offers 15-plus native integrations with external databases, plus a REST API connector for additional data sources. The new AI Co-Builder represents the culmination of this multi-year evolution — combining the building block architecture, the broad data integration layer, and a new AI interface into a single platform for business application creation.