Lovable HIts $500M in ARR, Apple Announces AI Siri

The episode opens with a roundup of major AI industry news. Lovable, a vibe coding platform, has reached $500 million in annualized recurring revenue — a $100 million jump since February — with users launching 1 million new projects per week and over 50 million total projects created since its 2023 launch. The host notes that while Lovable missed its aggressive billion-dollar ARR target from August 2024, its growth trajectory remains exceptional, with non-technical users building production-grade CRMs, HR platforms, and inventory systems.

Apple's WWDC 2026 is covered in detail. The host highlights two major features: a redesigned standalone Siri app with chat history and the ability to switch between AI models (including Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT), and a new natural language shortcut builder in iPadOS 26 that lets users create phone automations by typing plain English commands. The host speculates that Apple may eventually cut off third-party AI models in favor of its own Apple Intelligence LLM, drawing a parallel to the Google Maps-to-Apple Maps transition. He also notes Apple appeared to settle a $250 million lawsuit over false advertising related to earlier AI feature promises.

Perplexity has announced a 2028 IPO target, independent of outcomes for Anthropic or OpenAI. The host notes that OpenAI filed confidentially for an IPO, Anthropic filed for a trillion-dollar valuation IPO, and SpaceX has also filed — creating a cluster of major AI IPOs. Perplexity's CEO linked investor confidence in frontier AI labs to a hard metric: if either Anthropic or OpenAI ships no meaningful model capability advancements for six months, confidence will crack. The host also mentions that Perplexity routes simpler queries to open-source models for a 10–20% cost reduction.

Sam Altman's Tools for Humanity (World/Worldcoin) is laying off staff after regulatory bans in Kenya and South Korea, where the company had paid users ~$50 in Worldcoin tokens to scan their irises. Kenya banned the platform entirely and South Korea fined it $830,000 for privacy violations, cutting off two key low-cost growth markets. The company has enterprise integrations with Tinder, Zoom, and DocuSign for identity verification but faces an uncertain path forward.

Google DeepMind launched a three-month London-based accelerator selecting 15 European robotics startups from 10 countries. Startups are working in areas including surgical micro-robots, ocean autonomy, construction automation, humanoid development, and waste sorting. The host interprets this as DeepMind signaling a strategic shift toward embodied AI systems and using the accelerator as a pipeline for future partnerships and tooling development.

The host closes with a personal story about rebuilding his meditation app 'Self Pause' — originally built for ~$200,000 over several years — entirely through vibe coding in just two weeks, largely done by his pregnant wife. The rebuilt app is now native iOS (Swift), has resolved longstanding bugs like overnight playback crashes, features regenerated graphics via ChatGPT, and includes a new companion web app at selfpause.com. The host reflects that this experience demonstrates the transformative accessibility of AI-assisted development for anyone with a product vision.