Replit, an AI coding startup led by CEO Amjad Masad, has achieved a remarkable turnaround, tripling its valuation to $3 billion in a recent $250 million funding round. This milestone comes after a challenging 16-year journey marked by multiple failed business models, prolonged revenue stagnation, and a significant staff reduction last year, underscoring Masad's persistent obsession with democratizing programming.

Masad's ambition to make programming accessible dates back to 2009, prior to his arrival in the United States in 2012. His early open-source projects garnered attention, leading to his involvement as an early engineer at Codecademy, a key player in the massively online open courses (MOOC) revolution. He also contributed code to Udacity. Despite these foundational efforts, transforming his vision into a sustainable business of his own proved arduous. Replit, founded in 2016, struggled for eight years to find product-market fit, hovering around $2.83 million in annual recurring revenue for nearly five years.

The company explored various approaches, including selling to schools, but each attempt resulted in similar modest revenue levels. Throughout this period, Replit developed sophisticated infrastructure for cloud development environments and