After nine years of grinding, Replit finally found its market. Can it keep it?

While AI coding startups like Cursor close brow-raising rounds on barely three years of existence, Replit’s path to a $3 billion valuation has been anything but swift. For CEO Amjad Masad, who’s been building tools to democratize programming since 2009, it’s a story of muscling through multiple failed business models, years stuck at the same revenue plateau, and a near-death moment that forced him to cut half his staff.

That makes what happened next more remarkable. Earlier this month, the Bay Area-based company closed a $250 million funding round led by Prysm Capital, nearly tripling its valuation from 2023. The raise came on the heels of never-before-seen revenue growth for the company — from just $2.8 million last year to $150 million in annualized revenue in less than a year. But fo