Collaboration among engineers, product managers, and designers remains sluggish and cumbersome, according to a Y Combinator-supported startup.
The company has now raised $6.1 million to empower non-engineers to directly modify a company’s existing codebase via AI agents.
San Francisco-based Lightsprint claims its platform converts plain English requests into reviewable pull requests—proposed code changes that engineers vet before merging into production. This enables non-technical staff like product managers, designers, and operations personnel to participate more directly in software delivery.
“We discovered many product managers like myself, as well as designers, who genuinely wanted to move into production,” Lightsprint cofounder and CEO Benjamin Ong told Themoneytimes.
AI has transformed the roles of designers and product managers. Designers are increasingly leveraging generative AI tools to accelerate early concepts and prototypes, while product managers are adopting agents and vibe-coding tools. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts a 5% increase in web and digital interface designer employment between 2025 and 2035.
Ong explained that traditional software development entails a lengthy handoff chain: a product manager drafts a requirements document, engineers evaluate technical feasibility, designers produce mockups, and engineers then rebuild the feature in code—a process that can take two to three months.
Founded earlier this year by Ong, Benedict Chan, and Heng Hong Lee, the startup positions itself as an alternative to the fragmented toolset many companies rely on for product building—such as prototyping tools like Lovable, design platforms like Figma, and coding assistants like Anthropic’s Claude.
Lightsprint describes itself as a unified platform that integrates with a company’s existing codebase. Its agents can draft product requirement documents, generate code, and produce live previews, after which human engineers review the code and decide whether to merge it.
The company started with early users in April and now serves over 100 companies. Lightsprint participated in Y Combinator’s Spring 2026 cohort. Its seed round was led by 645 Ventures, with participation from January Capital, Rebel Fund, and angel investors including Opendoor CEO Kaz Nejatian.
The six-person team is split between San Francisco and Singapore. Ong said the fresh capital will fund hires in business sales, marketing, design, and engineering.
“We’re seeing product managers, designers, and even business teams build features and submit high-quality code changes themselves, while engineering retains control,” Ong said.
View the pitch deck used to secure the funding: