IBM invests in Israeli startup Anima to bring “vibe coding” into the enterprise
The design-to-code platform used by Amazon and Samsung aims to cut front-end work by up to 80%.
IBM has made a strategic investment in Anima, an Israeli company that converts digital designs into production-ready software code using artificial intelligence, signaling how quickly large corporations are embracing a new generation of developer tools known as “vibe coding.”
The investment, announced by Anima on Thursday, is intended to accelerate the use of its platform inside major organizations that are struggling to keep pace with the demand for digital products. Anima sits between designers who craft the look and feel of applications and engineers who must translate those visuals into working software.
Founded in 2017 and backed early by Y Combinator, Anima has built what it describes as an API-first system tightly integrated with the popular design tool Figma. Its software uses AI agents that draw on a company’s brand guidelines, design systems, and existing front-end code to generate interfaces automatically. More than 1.5 million users have installed the product, and companies including Amazon, Samsung, Apple, Disney, Deloitte, and Accenture are cited as customers.
Organizations using Anima report completing projects up to 50 percent faster and cutting as much as 80 percent of the manual front-end coding typically required to turn a designer’s mock-ups into functioning applications. Other AI coding tools such as Bolt.new and Replit rely on Anima to create user-interface code from professional designs.
“Anima’s impressive adoption is driven from a technology platform that has resonated with enterprise product and design teams,” said Emily Fontaine, IBM’s global head of venture capital. The company, she added, is “reshaping how organizations design, build, and ship digital products in the AI era,” as design and engineering increasingly converge.
Anima’s approach reframes design not as a static artifact but as “living, interactive code connected to real data,” according to the company. By allowing teams to work directly in code with AI assistance, it aims to collapse the traditional design-build loop that has long slowed digital projects.
“Three billion people will soon code,” said Avishay Cohen, Anima’s CEO and co-founder. “AI brings a new era for design and product, where code is the new canvas.” The partnership with IBM, he said, would help bring the platform into more enterprise environments.
Anima completed a $10 million Series A round in 2021 led by MizMaa Ventures with participation from INcapital and Hetz Ventures, at the time serving roughly half a million users. The company was founded by Avishay Cohen and Michal Cohen, a developer-designer couple, together with Or Arbel, creator of the viral app “Yo!”, who has since left the company.
