The rise of vibe coding — the new wave of AI-assisted app creation powered by platforms like Lovable and Replit AI — promised that anyone could build full-scale applications from a single prompt. But while AI can now generate production-ready code in seconds, deploying and maintaining that code remains a major pain point. That’s exactly where Shuttle comes in.
The platform engineering startup announced a $6 million seed round to make deploying AI-generated software as simple as writing it. The round includes investments from former GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke and Segment founder Calvin French-Owen, alongside other notable angels.
From Vibe to Live: The Missing Link in AI App Development
Founded in 2020 and a Y Combinator alum, the company has already become one of the most popular zero-config deployment tools for Rust developers, powering over 120,000 deployments for 20,000 engineers worldwide.
Now, with its new funding, Shuttle plans to expand beyond Rust, offering support for any programming language or AI coding system — from traditional Python and Go to next-gen agentic platforms like Lovable and Cursor.
“AI is wiping away the borders between programming ecosystems,” said Nodar Daneliya, Shuttle’s co-founder and CEO. “That’s creating an opportunity for us to unify deployment and infrastructure for all of them — starting where AI coding tools leave off.”
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One-Click Cloud for AI-Coded Apps
Here’s how it works: Shuttle takes code generated by AI systems and automatically determines the best infrastructure setup to run it. It then presents users with a complete deployment package and pricing breakdown. Once approved, Shuttle handles payment and provisioning, deploying the app directly to the user’s preferred cloud provider with minimal friction.
The company is also building an agentic interface for infrastructure, letting users manage databases, scaling, and hosting with the same natural language prompts used to create their apps.
“Essentially, we’ve created a specification layer that both humans and AI can understand,” Daneliya told TechCrunch. “It bridges the gap between code generation and infrastructure deployment — a universal spec for how apps go live.”
Scaling the Back-End for the AI-First Era
Shuttle’s timing is deliberate: as AI tools lower the barrier to software creation, demand for intelligent, automated infrastructure is exploding. Agentic systems are increasingly generating production-ready applications — but without the expertise or configuration necessary for reliable deployment.
Shuttle wants to become the default back-end layer for that new ecosystem.
“Spec-driven development is quickly becoming the new standard,” Daneliya said. “And there’s no reason infrastructure shouldn’t follow the same path.”
About Shuttle
Shuttle is a San Francisco–based platform engineering company making deployment and infrastructure automation effortless for developers and AI coding systems. Originally built for the Rust ecosystem, Shuttle’s zero-config platform now powers thousands of deployments globally and is expanding to support all major programming languages and AI-driven coding tools. Its mission: make turning code — human- or AI-written — into production software as seamless as writing it.
