In a transformative shift reminiscent of how platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok democratized photo and video sharing, Emergent, a company co-founded by twin brothers Mukund and Madhav Jha, is aiming to enable consumers to create applications. This platform allows non-technical individuals to design and build apps purely through prompts. While the concept of AI-powered app creation isn't unique in 2025, Emergent distinguishes itself by providing comprehensive aid throughout the app development process, managing complex APIs and deployment steps to alleviate users from technical burdens.

Emergent recently announced a significant financial milestone, securing $23 million in Series A funding. This round was led by Lightspeed, with notable participation from Y Combinator, Together (comprising founders of Freshworks’ Together Fund), and prominent angel investors including former a16z GP Balaji Srinivasan, Google’s Jeff Dean, and Mistral founding team member Devendra Chaplot. This latest injection of capital brings the company's total funding to $30 million to date.

The genesis of Emergent stems from the founders' deep technical backgrounds and observations. Mukund Jha, previously CTO at Google-backed quick commerce startup Dunzo in India, relocated to the U.S. to build something impactful with his brother Madhav, who worked at Dropbox. Both brothers have been involved in programming since age 12. In late 2023, after engaging with various AI labs, they recognized the imminent rise of AI-powered coding. Mukund shared that their strong conviction in the emergence of powerful AI agents led them to believe that agent-based app development would become a significant part of the global economy, a problem they committed to solving for the next two decades.

Emergent's strategy is clear: it does not seek to compete with developer-centric tools such as Claude Code and Cursor. Instead, its focus is on abstracting the entire software development lifecycle for non-technical users. Mukund emphasized that the company has built robust infrastructure from the ground up to support app development. Recognizing that non-technical users may not understand coding errors, Emergent has developed AI agents specifically designed to identify and rectify mistakes within the applications.

A practical demonstration involved building a vaccine and medicine tracker for pets. Starting with a simple prompt, the AI agent iteratively asked detailed questions regarding pet types, multi-user functionality, reminder scheduling, and other preferences. Critically, the agent proactively added essential screens like a dashboard and intuitive interfaces for adding pets and vaccinations, even though these were not explicitly requested. The entire process, from creation to auto-testing the initial satisfactory version of the app, took less than half an hour, highlighting Emergent's superior capabilities compared to other