Google CEO Sundar Pichai Is ‘Vibe Coding’ a Website for Fun

Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai disclosed that he has been “vibe coding,” or utilizing AI to code for him by means of prompts, to construct a webpage.

Pichai mentioned on Wednesday at Bloomberg Tech in San Francisco that he had been experimenting with AI coding assistants Cursor and Replit, each of that are marketed as capable of create code from textual content prompts, to construct a brand new webpage.

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“I’ve simply been messing round — both with Cursor or I vibe coded with Replit — making an attempt to construct a customized webpage with all of the sources of knowledge I needed in a single place,” Pichai mentioned, per Enterprise Insider.

^{Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg by way of Getty Photos}

Pichai mentioned that he had “partially” accomplished the webpage, and that coding had “come a great distance” from its early days.

Vibe coding is a time period coined by OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy. In a publish on X in February, Karpathy described how AI instruments are getting adequate that software program builders can “overlook that the code even exists.” As an alternative, they’ll ask for AI to code on their behalf and create a mission or net app with out writing a line of code themselves.

There is a new sort of coding I name “vibe coding”, the place you absolutely give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and overlook that the code even exists. It is doable as a result of the LLMs (e.g. Cursor Composer w Sonnet) are getting too good. Additionally I simply speak to Composer with SuperWhisper…

— Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) February 2, 2025

The rise of vibe coding has led AI coding assistants to blow up in reputation. One AI coding instrument, Cursor, turned the fastest-growing software program app to succeed in $100 million in annual income in January. Nearly all of Cursor’s income comes from 360,000 particular person subscribers, not massive enterprises. Nonetheless, that steadiness may change: As of earlier this week, Amazon is reportedly in talks to undertake Cursor for its workers.

One other coding instrument, Replit, says it has enabled customers to make greater than two million apps in six months. The corporate has 34 million international customers as of November.

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Noncoders are utilizing vibe coding to convey their concepts to life. Lenard Flören, a 28-year-old artwork director with no prior coding expertise, instructed NBC Information final month that he used AI instruments to vibe code a customized exercise monitoring app. Harvard College neuroscience scholar, Rishab Jain, 20, instructed the outlet that he used Replit to vibe code an app that interprets historic texts into English. As an alternative of downloading another person’s app and paying a subscription charge, “now you’ll be able to simply make it,” Jain mentioned.

Common vibe coding instruments supply a free entry level into vibe coding, in addition to subscription plans. Replit has a free tier, a $20 a month core stage with expanded capabilities, comparable to limitless non-public and public apps, and a $35 per consumer, per 30 days groups subscription. Cursor additionally has a free tier, a $20 per 30 days professional stage, and a $40 per consumer, per 30 days, enterprise subscription.

Regardless of the existence of vibe coding, Pichai nonetheless thinks that human software program engineers are needed. At Bloomberg Tech on Wednesday, Pichai mentioned that Google will hold hiring human engineers and rising its engineering workforce “even into subsequent yr” as a result of an even bigger workforce “permits us to do extra.”

“I simply view this [AI] as making engineers dramatically extra productive,” he mentioned.

Alphabet is the fifth most dear firm on the earth with a market cap of $2 trillion.