Aiming at the billion-dollar market of Anthropic! Google enters the AI coding battle and reaches a multi-year partnership with Replit

On Thursday, Google Cloud announced a multi-year partnership with AI coding startup Replit, challenging competitors Anthropic and Cursor in the increasingly competitive AI coding tools market.

The new collaboration with Replit is expected to strengthen Google's competitive position in the rapidly growing field of "vibe coding," which has seen several companies achieve annual revenues in the billion-dollar range. Under the agreement, Replit will expand its use of Google Cloud services, integrate more Google AI models into its platform, and provide AI coding solution support for enterprise customers. Google will continue to serve as Replit's primary cloud service provider.

In September, Replit announced it had completed a $250 million funding round, nearly doubling its valuation from the previous round in 2023 to $3 billion. At that time, the company stated that its annualized revenue had grown from $2.8 million to $150 million in less than a year. Data from fintech company Ramp shows that Replit has the fastest new customer growth among software vendors. Meanwhile, Google's new customer acquisition and spending on the Ramp platform have outpaced other companies.

This collaboration comes as competition in the AI coding tools market heats up. Anthropic announced on Tuesday that its product Claude Code reached an annualized operating revenue of $1 billion in November, while coding startup Cursor achieved a valuation of $29.3 billion in November funding, also announcing an annualized revenue of $1 billion.

"Vibe Coding" Becomes the New Battleground

"Vibe coding" refers to a software development method that utilizes large language models (LLMs) to generate code through natural language prompts, aiming to accelerate the development process and lower technical barriers. This phenomenon emerged earlier this year when AI models became more proficient at generating code using only natural language prompts, enabling users with little programming experience to create functional code or even complete applications using AI.

Founded nearly a decade ago, Replit is currently a leader in the "vibe coding" space. The company positions itself as an easy-to-use product for non-developers, which may help Google Cloud expand adoption rates among enterprises and extend its AI business beyond traditional engineers.

Under the new collaboration framework with Google, Replit runs and scales its AI agent Replit Agent through Google Cloud's Vertex AI, powered by models such as Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet. Additionally, Replit has integrated Google's Gemini 1.5 Flash to enhance features like Replit Assistant, helping to improve code, fix bugs, and develop new features.

Enterprise Market as a Growth Engine

Replit claims to have over 500,000 enterprise users on its platform, primarily from product, design, operations, sales, and marketing functions. The company has observed two key application scenarios forming: product and design teams using Replit for rapid prototyping to shorten development cycles; and sales, marketing, and operations teams building custom software to address specific business problems that traditional Software as a Service (SaaS) tools cannot meet Riding on the momentum of the highly-rated model Gemini 3, Google Cloud is entering the competition. Since the release of Gemini 3 more than two weeks ago, the stock price of Google's parent company Alphabet has risen by over 12% as of Wednesday's close. Data from Ramp shows that Google is experiencing a faster growth rate in new customers and spending on its platform than any other company.

In September, when announcing a partnership with Replit, Dai Vu, Managing Director of Google Cloud Marketplace and Independent Software Vendor GTM Program, stated: "Bringing Replit to the Google Cloud Marketplace will help customers quickly deploy, manage, and grow development environments on Google Cloud's trusted global infrastructure. Replit can now scale securely to support customers' digital transformation journeys."

From Microsoft Collaboration to Deepening Google Alliance

Notably, Replit announced a strategic partnership with Google Cloud competitor Microsoft in July this year. However, Replit confirmed that the agreement with Google Cloud is not exclusive. This means that the company has not left Google Cloud but is expanding its business scope to support the Microsoft platform.

Nearly two months later, Replit further deepened its collaboration with Google Cloud, announcing in early September that its services would be available on the Google Cloud Marketplace, providing easier access for enterprises and organizations.

Replit CEO and co-founder Amjad Masad stated at the time: "Our mission is to empower entrepreneurial individuals to turn their ideas into software, regardless of their coding experience, whether they are starting a startup or innovating within a corporation. Google Cloud's secure and scalable infrastructure, along with our listing on the Google Cloud Marketplace, plays a crucial role in achieving this mission."

Currently, applications built and run through Replit are typically hosted on Google Cloud. Replit's enterprise clients are running applications on Google Cloud's infrastructure, using Google Cloud Storage for storage services, defending against DDoS attacks with Google Cloud Armor, and protecting sensitive information with Google Cloud's secure storage