Every month, builders get a window into how Bubble is thinking by asking Co-founder and Co-CEO Emmanuel Straschnov anything they want. In April's AMA, Emmanuel Straschnov fielded questions from the community for just under an hour, covering the AI Agent's expansion to all existing apps, Bubble's argument for visual development over generated code, mobile updates big and small, and a surprisingly candid conversation about what Bubble's business looks like from the inside.
Watch the replay below, or keep reading for a summary of everything he said.
The AI Agent is coming to every app
If there's one topic that comes up at every AMA, it's the AI Agent — and this month, Emmanuel had concrete news. As of April 1st, the agent is no longer limited to apps that were generated through Bubble's AI flow. It's now also accessible in brand-new apps created from a blank canvas or a template. As for existing apps, we’re rolling it out first to Bubble's Gold agency partners and ambassadors over the next few weeks, with the goal of making it available to every app on the platform by the end of June.
A common critique of AI-assisted building tools is that they're most useful for people starting fresh. Emmanuel pushed back on that framing directly. "I strongly disagree," he said, pointing to the arc of how AI tools like Claude have evolved — starting with simple tasks and growing to handle complex, established codebases. The same trajectory, he argued, applies to Bubble's Agent. The vision isn't just an AI that helps beginners launch apps. It's an agent capable of tackling large-scale tasks on sophisticated, long-running applications — things like coordinating overhauls across multiple pages, which would be enormously time-consuming to do manually.
"It's not there yet," he acknowledged. "We need to work on this. But I definitely think this will be valuable for everyone." For anyone who's been waiting to see whether AI tools on Bubble are actually useful for their existing build, the next few months should answer that question.
Why Bubble thinks visual programming languages beat generated code
A pre-submitted question asked directly: Does Bubble believe it can outperform vibe-coded apps in development time, cost, and customer demand — especially now that code-generating AI tools are fast and improving?
Emmanuel used it as an opportunity to articulate the core belief that shapes how Bubble is built. The issue with vibe coding tools, he argued, isn't the AI or even the prompting experience — it's the output. "Even though AI has made manipulating code easier, more fun and more approachable for humans, because you're talking natural language, it is not the right language to describe a business application."
The alternative Bubble has spent 14 years developing is a visual programming language that describes application logic in plain steps you can read, modify, and reason about directly: if a user clicks a button, create a database entry, send an email, charge a credit card. That structure, Emmanuel said, is easier to read, less error-prone, and easier to modify than thousands of lines of generated code.
The practical consequence shows up when things break — which they do, in any application. With a vibe coding tool, if AI can't fix the issue, you're stuck in a loop. "You go more in loops because you don't really look at the code because it's hard to read." With Bubble, you can see what's happening and intervene directly. Bubble's Agent generates and edits that visual language, not traditional code — and Emmanuel said the team is seeing real progress on that front after a slower start building the foundations.
Mobile: Plugin editor, app store realities, and picking up fast
Mobile development generated a lot of questions. A few things worth knowing:
The mobile plugin editor is the team's top mobile priority right now. Emmanuel said it should start becoming accessible to some users by the end of April — a significant unlock, because it gives the community the ability to create native mobile experiences that Bubble's own team hasn't had time to build. Once the team can see what the community creates with it, that will help shape the next priorities on the mobile roadmap.
App store publishing is a focus area, but some friction is beyond Bubble's control. Emmanuel encouraged users to flag anything that feels like a Bubble-specific issue, while being candid that Apple in particular has been more stringent lately — he attributed some of this to the sheer volume of vibe-coded apps flooding the App Store, and Apple working through how to handle the new volume. "There are limits to what we can do here."
Don't overthink the "beta" label. For anyone waiting to commit to Bubble's mobile offering until it officially exits beta, Emmanuel offered some perspective: "Don't anchor too much on the beta wording." He pointed to Gmail staying in beta for several years while millions of people relied on it daily. Today, he said, "I'm comfortable saying that our mobile offering is something that can be used and is already used in production."
Mobile usage is picking up fast, particularly among new users. In the editor, the split between web and mobile projects is getting closer than you might expect — "pretty close, actually," in Emmanuel's words. Web still dominates overall platform traffic, but that's largely because web apps have had 14 years to accumulate users. The trend among newer projects tells a different story.
Tablet support is coming. Emmanuel noted that iOS and iPadOS are similar enough that Bubble has already enabled some users to build iPad applications. Making this more broadly available is something the team plans to do, and it's on the roadmap.
A major backend upgrade — and what it means for performance
If you noticed faster performance on certain database operations in early March, that wasn't an accident. Emmanuel confirmed that the team pushed a major backend upgrade that produced dramatic improvements on specific tasks. Database copying between live and development environments, for example, now takes minutes in some cases where it previously took hours. He cited instances where certain operations ran 50 times faster.
These gains are the result of years of work migrating off older backend infrastructure — work that also opens the door to further improvements down the line, including expanding the complexity of privacy rule expressions (more on that below). Roughly half of Bubble's engineering team focuses on backend and database performance, and Emmanuel said it's an ongoing area of investment.
For anyone running into editor slowness on very large applications: A refresh (Ctrl+F5) is a practical short-term fix, and nothing is lost in the process since everything is persistent. For consistent or unusual slowness, it’s worth reaching out to the support team — some issues may be something the team can actually investigate and improve.
On the horizon: HIPAA, server-side rendering, and animations
HIPAA compliance is in progress and targeted for the second half of 2026. It will require a dedicated/Enterprise plan, so anyone who needs it should plan to work with Bubble's sales team rather than self-serve. Emmanuel was careful to set realistic expectations: The work involved isn't only technical. "There's a lot of compliance work that needs to be done carefully." (For anyone outside the US: HIPAA governs the handling of patient health data in the United States.)
Server-side rendering is under active exploration, though there are no firm plans yet. Bubble's current architecture is primarily client-side, but recent shifts in available technology have made the team curious about whether moving more rendering server-side could improve performance and SEO. An internal thread is actively looking into it.
Animations are on the list for improvement. The current offering is, by Emmanuel's own description, "a little bit old." Many users have found workarounds through plugins or HTML elements with AI-generated code, and he acknowledged that works reasonably well for now. Improvements are tied to broader thinking the team is doing about Bubble's frontend architecture going forward.
Privacy rules came up in the context of expression depth and complexity. Emmanuel was clear that privacy rules should be non-negotiable for any live application — Bubble has offered them since 2014, and the March backend upgrade opens possibilities for expanding what's expressible. But his more urgent message was this: "If you have an application with real traffic and you have not invested time in making sure the privacy rules are set up correctly... please fix this immediately."
On Bubble's business and long-term stability
A few questions touched directly on Bubble's financials and its viability as infrastructure for serious businesses — and Emmanuel answered with characteristic candor.
On profitability: Bubble didn't burn cash last year, but staying profitable isn't the current goal. "I want to invest more," he said. The emphasis he returned to was financial discipline — something that goes back to the seven years he and Josh ran the company without outside funding. "We're careful, I would say like you would as a family person, in how we manage our financials." The company is well-capitalized, and he said the long-term financial stability of the business is "very much guaranteed right now."
On whether Bubble is ready for serious SaaS businesses: He makes no secret of his perspective here, but he backed it with numbers. Apps across the platform processed over $1 billion in revenue last year, with individual businesses doing tens of millions annually. For founders who start to worry about scale ceilings, reach out to the team early. Bubble has an internal team of experts specifically to help builders at scale optimize their apps' architecture — a service that comes standard with Enterprise plans, and that the team tries to extend to others where bandwidth allows.
On partnerships: Bubble works with Anthropic (early model access for integration and feedback), Stripe (developer referrals), OpenAI, and Microsoft through the Microsoft Founder Hub. Emmanuel said the team is looking to do more of this.
On an IPO: Not something he's thinking about right now, though he appreciated the question as a vote of confidence.
One skill worth building outside Bubble
Emmanuel closed the session with a question about what skills a serious Bubble Developer should cultivate outside the platform to stay relevant long-term. His answer didn't involve any specific tool or technology.
"What creates the best product is creating something that people need and that is an enjoyable experience. This is not platform-specific."
He recommended investing time in UX thinking — user empathy, flow design, understanding what keeps people engaged — before jumping into building. His specific suggestion: Start with paper. Mockups and sketches, before touching the editor, help you build the right thing rather than building quickly and correcting later. "Even though today with AI, things change a little bit, I do think there is a lot of value in that."
His reasoning applies across any tool or era of development: The difference between products that succeed and those that don't usually comes down to whether someone thought carefully about the user's experience before writing the first line of logic.
Have questions for the next AMA? Keep an eye on Bubble's social channels for how to submit them ahead of time.
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