It's likely safe to say-creative accounting's been around for as long as accounting itself. In 1494, for example, mathematician and 'father of modern accounting' Luca Pacioli wrote of Venetian merchants willfully rendering their ledgers illegible. In the Gilded Age, inflating assets and understating liabilities was standard practice across a booming system. And who can forget the "channel stuffing" of the 2000s?
In less than three years, Midjourney's ARR went from zero to $200 million. In 20 months, ElevenLabs, a voice AI startup, saw its ARR soar from zero to near $100 million. In three months, vibe coding darling Lovable went from zero to $17 million in ARR, this summer hitting $100 million in ARR. In its first six months, Decagon hit "seven figures" in ARR, the company reported.
Perplexity, the AI-powered search startup that compete with Google by providing conversational answers to user queries, has secured $200 million in new capital at a $20 billion valuation, The Information reported. The fresh funding comes just two months after the company raised $100 million at an $18 billion valuation, according to Bloomberg's July report. Since its founding three years ago, the rapidly growing AI company has raised $1.5 billion in total funding, according to PitchBook data.
Investors are clambering to get onto Swedish vibe-coding startup Lovable's cap table, making unsolicited offers of investment that value the company at more than $4 billion, reports Financial Times. Lovable CEO Anton Osika isn't currently engaging with the flurry of inbound, the Times says, which comes a few weeks after the startup announced a $200 million round at a $1.8 billion valuation in a deal led by Accel.