Full-Stack Engineer

Lovable raises $400 million and reaches a valuation of $13.3 billion. From Stockholm to a European AI powerhouse: Menlo Ventures and EQT are leading Lovable's $400 million Series C round. News by Marc Nemitz · Stockholm, 13. August 2026 The Swedish AI company Lovable has closed a Series C funding round of $400 million. The round is led by Menlo Ventures and co-led by the Scaleup Europe Fund, managed by the European investor EQT. With this new funding, the company's valuation rises to $13.3 billion. Other participants in the round include Balderton Capital and Carmignac from Europe, Kaszek Ventures and LTS Growth from Latin America, Tencent and World Innovation Lab from Asia, and Regent from the U.S. Numerous existing investors have also participated again, including Accel, Antler, CapitalG, DST Global, Evantic Capital, HubSpot Ventures, and Salesforce Ventures. From a European startup to a $13-billion company. Lovable's goal is to make software development accessible even to people who aren't traditional developers themselves. Users should be able to turn their ideas into their own applications, internal tools, and ultimately complete digital business models. With the new capital, Lovable intends to increasingly expand this platform into a place where companies can not only create software but also run their businesses. Its growth since launch has been remarkable. Lovable was launched as recently as November 2024. According to the company, more than 60 million projects have been created using the platform since then. Applications built with Lovable now record more than 900 million visits per month. In its first year, the platform reached employees at roughly half of the Fortune 500 companies; that figure has since risen to nearly two-thirds. As a result, Lovable is rapidly emerging as one of Europe's most valuable AI companies. $400 million for the next phase of expansion. With its Series C funding, Lovable aims to significantly expand its original scope. Until now, the focus has primarily been on the simple creation of software. Going forward, the platform will place greater emphasis on helping to actually operate the businesses and applications built with it. To this end, Lovable has already introduced payment features, tools for SEO and AI search, as well as integrations for Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Stripe, and ElevenLabs, among others. At the same time, the company is expanding its security, governance, and monitoring capabilities. According to Lovable, its own user surveys show that this is indeed leading to the creation of businesses. Nearly eight out of ten respondents are using the platform to build a business or a side project that they intend to monetize. More than a third of them are already generating revenue. AI is set to act increasingly autonomously. The next stage of development, however, goes beyond traditional "Vibe Coding." Lovable aims to make its platform more proactive. The system is designed to increasingly understand a user's goals, independently identify where action is needed, and assist with implementation without having to wait for a new instruction for every single step. At the same time, the system is designed to learn from millions of created applications which decisions actually lead to successful outcomes. This isn't just about whether software works technically, but also, for example, whether it generates revenue, improves processes, or supports companies in their growth. This also shifts the vision: What started as a tool for quickly building applications could, in the long term, evolve into an AI platform that takes over a significant portion of a digital company's technical infrastructure and operational processes. Lovable aims to grow to around 450 employees. A significant portion of the fresh capital is also expected to go toward further expanding the workforce. Lovable plans to grow its team to around 450 employees by the end of this year. The company is particularly seeking specialists in machine learning, product development, infrastructure, and security. The company's headquarters will remain in Stockholm. At the same time, Lovable is expanding its presence in London, Boston, San Francisco, and New York. The Series C round thus also sends a remarkable signal to the European AI ecosystem. With EQT's Scaleup Europe Fund, a European growth fund is among the lead investors in the round. Lovable is one of its first investments. With a valuation of $13.3 billion, the company also demonstrates the scale that European AI startups can now achieve in a very short time.

Iconic Voice Library: ElevenLabs unlocks history's vocal legends. August 7, 2026 Voice Rental: A new marketplace for historical catalogs. On August 6, 2026, ElevenLabs hit a major milestone in the generative audio industry by officially launching its historical voice rental program. According to PYMNTS.com, this initiative grants companies legal access to vocal timbres that have shaped history, integrating them into advertising campaigns or digital narrations. This is no longer just a technical feat; it is an economic model for managing sound rights. Three documented upsides for content creators. * Contractual Authenticity: Brands can use famous voices without risk of litigation, thanks to secured licensing agreements via the platform. * Instant Studio Quality: Voice models inherit Multilingual v2 technology, ensuring natural emotion and intonation across multiple languages. * Standardized Deployment: API integration allows for generating thousands of personalized messages with an iconic voice in milliseconds. Three conditions and risks buried behind the headline. * Usage Restrictions: Access is limited to approved brands, and certain domains (politics, religion) likely remain excluded to prevent misuse. * Model Dependency: Sound fidelity depends on the quality of original recordings used for training the model. * Scarcity Pricing: Rental costs for legendary voices are significantly higher than standard synthetic voices in the catalog. Field observations on generative audio. Audio is becoming the new playground for AI agents. Integrating high-perceived-value voices helps break through the vocal "uncanny valley." Matthieu Pesesse is seeing the emergence of pipelines where text is generated by frontier LLMs and then interpreted by ElevenLabs for total immersion in conversational interfaces. Three levers to activate this week. * Explore the Catalog: Check the "Iconic Voices" section of the ElevenLabs dashboard to listen to available demos. * Connect the API: Use the Python or JavaScript SDK to automate voice generation in your test projects. * Verify Licenses: Review the specific "Voice Rental" terms if you plan for commercial distribution. Which legend would you want narrating your next technical project? If you're into the latest AI-driven tech, I publish a deep dive every day on frontier models, hardware, robotics, automations and AI-generated music. Get the next one straight in your inbox - sign-up takes ten seconds. Sources. * ElevenLabs Lets Brands Rent History's Most Famous Voices (PYMNTS.com, 2026-08-06)

Spotify surpasses 300 million subscribers as AI push fuels platform growth. Spotify topped 300 million subscribers and 777 million monthly active users in Q2 as AI features and new content offerings helped drive continued growth. Aug 5, 2026 - 08:16 Spotify surpassed 300 million subscribers for the first time during the second quarter, continuing its steady growth despite increasing subscription prices in several markets earlier this year. The music streaming company also reported reaching 777 million monthly active users, representing a 12% increase from the same period a year ago. The company said quarterly revenue reached €4.8 billion ($5.52 billion), up 14% year over year. Subscriber growth increased 9% during the quarter, supported by Spotify's continued efforts to broaden its platform beyond music streaming. In recent months, Spotify has expanded into new content categories and services, including fitness programming, magazine narrations, concert ticket integration and the sale of physical books, as it seeks to diversify its offerings. AI becomes a bigger part of Spotify's platform. Artificial intelligence has become a major focus forSpotify'ss product development. The company has introduced tools that create personalised podcasts using content from multiple sources and launched an experimental desktop application in May with functionality similar to Google's NotebookLM. Spotify has also rolled out AI-powered question-and-answer features and automated briefing generation for podcasts, partnered with ElevenLabs on audiobook creation tools, and signed agreements with music labels allowing users to create AI-assisted fan remixes. Last month, the streaming platform expanded those efforts further by introducing a conversational AI assistant that lets users discover and control content using natural-language prompts. Growth continues despite AI music concerns. Theplatform'ss subscriber base has continued to grow even as criticism around AI-generated music has intensified. In response, Spotify has introduced artist verification and previously launched optional labels identifying AI-generated music available on the service. Meanwhile, some users have turned to third-party services such as SoullessMusic.com and SlopTracker to help identify AI-generated tracks, according to reporting by 404 Media last month, highlighting the ongoing debate over AI's growing role in music streaming.