Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai disclosed that he has been “vibe coding,” or using AI to code for him through prompts, to build a webpage.
Pichai said on Wednesday at Bloomberg Tech in San Francisco that he had been experimenting with AI coding assistants Cursor and Replit, both of which are advertised as able to create code from text prompts, to build a new webpage.
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“I’ve just been messing around — either with Cursor or I vibe coded with Replit — trying to build a custom webpage with all the sources of information I wanted in one place,” Pichai said, per Business Insider.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Pichai said that he had “partially” completed the webpage, and that coding had “come a long way” from its early days.
Vibe coding is a term coined by OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy. In a post on X in February, Karpathy described how AI tools are getting good enough that software developers can “forget that the code even exists.” Instead, they can ask for AI to code on their behalf and create a project or web app without writing a line of code themselves.
The rise of vibe coding has led AI coding assistants to explode in popularity. One AI coding tool, Cursor, became the fastest-growing software app to reach $100 million in annual revenue in January. Almost all of Cursor’s revenue comes from 360,000 individual subscribers, not big enterprises. However, that balance could change: As of earlier this week, Amazon is reportedly in talks to adopt Cursor for its employees.
Another coding tool, Replit, says it has enabled users to make more than two million apps in six months. The company has 34 million global users as of November.
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Noncoders are using vibe coding to bring their ideas to life. Lenard Flören, a 28-year-old art director with no prior coding experience, told NBC News last month that he used AI tools to vibe code a personalized workout tracking app. Harvard University neuroscience student, Rishab Jain, 20, told the outlet that he used Replit to vibe code an app that translates ancient texts into English. Instead of downloading someone else’s app and paying a subscription fee, “now you can just make it,” Jain said.
Popular vibe coding tools offer a free entry point into vibe coding, as well as subscription plans. Replit has a free tier, a $20 a month core level with expanded capabilities, such as unlimited private and public apps, and a $35 per user, per month teams subscription. Cursor also has a free tier, a $20 per month pro level, and a $40 per user, per month, business subscription.
Despite the existence of vibe coding, Pichai still thinks that human software engineers are necessary. At Bloomberg Tech on Wednesday, Pichai said that Google will keep hiring human engineers and growing its engineering workforce “even into next year” because a bigger workforce “allows us to do more.”
“I just view this [AI] as making engineers dramatically more productive,” he said.
Alphabet is the fifth most valuable company in the world with a market cap of $2 trillion.
