How Supabase Accidentally Became the Backbone of Vibe Coding
With a $200 million investment led by Accel and a $2 billion valuation, Supabase is having its moment. But how serious is the hype? So serious that an Accel investor took a 17-hour flight to meet the CEO, Paul Copplestone, in one of the most remote parts of New Zealand. Copplestone wasn’t sure if it was about the deal or if he just wanted an “epic story”, but either way, he was impressed. investor decided to travel 17 hours to one of the most remote parts of New Zealand to chat about @supabase can't decide if he really wants to invest or just wants an epic story. ngl, I'm impressed pic.twitter.com/Dhz5eLiMwy— Paul Copplestone – e/postgres (@kiwicopple) January 26, 2025 Founded in 2020 as an open-source alternative to Google’s Firebase, Supabase is now widely used by vibe coding platforms to simplify software development, offering backend capabilities like a PostgreSQL database, authentication, and real-time features in a familiar, developer-friendly format. As vibe coding rises, people are building apps faster than ever using tools like Bolt.new, Lovable, v0 by Vercel, Cursor, Windsurf, and Replit. Many rely on Supabase as their backend engine, making it all work. Besides, the company now serves over 2 million developers managing 3.5 million databases, with its GitHub repository exceeding 81,000 stars. “We raise money so Ant [Wilson] and I can sleep well at night, knowing we can continue building the business our way,” said Copplestone in a Reddit AMA. “Supabase needs a bigger and bigger balance sheet to make sure we can pay upfront for cloud hosting, a support team, etc. If we were simply break-even with no extra money in the bank, there is no way that I could do that.” Copplestone added that Supabase isn’t following the all-too-familiar pattern of hiking prices after raising funds. “We’ll be giving away more so that more companies build with Supabase. The more companies that start with Supabase, the more that scale up: your success is our success,” he said. A big part of Supabase’s success is our willingness to improve existing standards rather than reinvent the wheel– postgres– s3– Deno– PostgREST– UI blocks using shadcn– embeddings with pgvectorOpen source is a super power— Paul Copplestone – e/postgres (@kiwicopple) April 20, 2025 Favourite Backend Tool Today, the company has quickly established itself as the go-to backend for modern vibe coding platforms, offering an easy way to manage databases and authentication without writing backend code. Platforms like Lovable and Bolt.new are leveraging Supabase to let users deploy full-stack apps with minimal friction—no server setup required. The combination is resonating with developers. “Lovable + Supabase is a dream team for taking ideas to apps!” said Tyler Shukert, DevRel engineer at Supabase. “With just a few prompts, you get a full-stack app with auth, database, and a beautiful UI.” Even v0 by Vercel has jumped on board, recently adding Supabase support to power its AI-generated Next.js frontends with a production-ready PostgreSQL backend. Cursor and Windsurf are often paired with Supabase in vibe coding workflows, especially for projects requiring a robust, scalable backend with minimal configuration. “Back in 2020 when Supabase was founded, Postgres’s leadership position was less certain – but the rise of AI, support for semi-structured data, and the emergence of pgvector have cemented its relevance and importance. Supabase has doubled down on this ecosystem, contributing over 25 open-source tools (including a language server) and sponsoring projects that push Postgres forward,” said its investor, Accel, in a blog post. The momentum is visible across the startup world as well. In a recent post on X, Copplestone highlighted just how widespread its adoption has become. “There are 246 companies in the latest Y Combinator batch (W24). Seventy-two of them use Supabase: 29% of the batch.” “Forget AI coding for a second. One of the biggest shifts in my development speed happened when I switched to Supabase for the backend. No more setting up databases from scratch, configuring auth, or dealing with slow APIs. Just plug in Supabase and start shipping,” said Prajwal Tomar, creator of Ignytlabs, in a post on X. Better Than Firebase? While Firebase and other backend-as-a-service (BaaS) platforms remain popular, Supabase stands out for its open-source ethos and PostgreSQL foundation. Firebase locks users into Google’s ecosystem and lacks the relational power of PostgreSQL, while alternatives like Appwrite and Directus haven’t gained the same traction. Accel partner Arun Mathew sees Supabase’s potential to dominate the high-value database layer, saying, “Every major platform shift creates value at the database level,” comparing its rise to Oracle and MongoDB. As vibe coding matures, Supabase is poised to dominate. Its open-source model encourages innovation, while its robust feature set supports the increasingly complex applications built on platforms like Lovable. The rise of AI agents, which automate entire development workflows, will only amplify Supabase’s importance. With remote teams spanning New Zealand, Peru, and Macedonia, Supabase plans to expand its community and product suite, positioning itself as a default backend for AI and enterprise applications. The funding will likely accelerate tools for “vibe coders” and large-scale deployments, capitalising on PostgreSQL’s reliability and open-source ethos.
The company quickly established itself as the go-to backend for modern vibe coding platforms, offering an easy way to manage databases and authentication.
With a $200 million investment led by Accel and a $2 billion valuation, Supabase is having its moment. But how serious is the hype? So serious that an Accel investor took a 17-hour flight to meet the CEO, Paul Copplestone, in one of the most remote parts of New Zealand. Copplestone wasn’t sure if it was about the deal or if he just wanted an “epic story”, but either way, he was impressed.
["firebase", "Supabase", "Vibe Coding"]
["PostgreSQL", "Go", "Supabase", "firebase", "AI", "MongoDB", "Scala", "Git", "RAG", "Vibe Coding", "SQL", "GitHub", "R"]
["AI", "RAG", "MongoDB", "PostgreSQL", "R", "SQL", "Go", "Scala", "Git", "GitHub"]
Siddharth is a media graduate who loves to explore tech through journalism and putting forward ideas worth pondering about in the era of artificial intelligence.