Riff Raises $16 Million Series A to Bring “Vibe Coding” AI App Building to the Enterprise
Oslo-based Riff, formerly known as Databutton, has raised $16 million (approximately €14 million) in a Series A funding round to scale its “vibe coding” platform that empowers non-technical professionals to build enterprise-grade AI applications. The round was led by Northzone, with participation from existing backers Skyfall Ventures, Maki.vc, Sondo Capital, and Global Founders Capital, as well as a new investor, Illusian — the family office of Supercell founder Ilkka Paananen. This latest raise brings Riff’s total funding to around $21 million.
Founded in 2021 by Trygve Karper, Martin Røed, and Viral Shah, Riff’s mission addresses a common challenge in enterprise AI deployment: many AI projects never reach production. Rather than just prototyping, Riff gives “doers” throughout organizations—analysts, operators, and other non-engineers—the tools to build and launch real, data-intensive, secure AI applications using ready-made starter apps, templates, and guided playbooks.
Riff’s platform offers native integrations with widely used SaaS tools like HubSpot, Google Drive, Google Sheets, Mixpanel, Stripe, and Notion, while its AI-driven agents automate workflows such as data synchronization, alerts, and background operations. It also supports “background agents” that enable users to make changes directly from mobile devices and introduces domain whitelisting to improve app authentication security.
The company says it already serves more than 150,000 users, and notable customers include Twilio and Cognite. These companies use Riff to build internal apps and automations that improve productivity across industries like manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, finance, and consumer goods.
Riff co-founder and CEO Trygve Karper expressed optimism about how the new funding will allow the company to expand: he said that many of their users had struggled in “weeks stuck in limbo” with earlier tools that couldn’t scale to production. With modular building blocks and expert support, users of Riff can quickly create solutions that deliver real business value — and the Series A financing will allow Riff to “scale that impact to thousands more doers in the real world.”
From Northzone’s perspective, the firm sees Riff’s “vibe coding” as a transformative shift in software development: instead of relying solely on engineers, more people can build real applications without writing traditional code. Michiel Kotting, Partner at Northzone, said the investor was drawn to Riff’s “relentless focus on providing doers with the ability to build tooling that works in production.”
Riff plans to use the capital to accelerate product development, grow its go-to-market operations, and expand its services arm — including onboarding support and customized playbooks — to ensure that its users can not just build but successfully deploy AI-powered tools. The company’s ambition is to democratize the creation of AI apps inside enterprises, lowering the barrier for adoption and helping organizations turn AI pilots into fully operational, scalable solutions.
