Tomáš Halgaš sells his startup for the second time, to Lovable

Slovak entrepreneur Tomáš Halgaš is once again in the tech world's spotlight: his startup Sutro, which built secure and reliable software, has been acquired by Sweden's Lovable — one of Europe's fastest-growing startups, valued at over 280 billion crowns.

Notably, the deal came about almost by accident. Halgaš originally approached Lovable founder Anton Osika with a partnership proposal, hoping the Swedish company would simply adopt Sutro's technology. “I went to Anton hoping Lovable would use our technology. In the end, it turned into an acquisition offer,” Halgaš writes on LinkedIn.

Over five years, the Sutro team built its own programming language, compiler and hosting platform to help developers create secure applications even without deep technical knowledge. The project was backed by investors including Eniac Ventures and angel investors such as Peter Welinder, OpenAI's vice president of product and partnerships. According to Crunchbase, Sutro raised $8.2 million (around 175 million crowns) at the seed stage alone. The parties are not disclosing the value of the current deal, though according to Slovak Forbes, Lovable was not the only company interested in Sutro.

For Lovable, the move is a strategic boost: the company is not yet three years old, but its valuation has doubled since winter to 280 billion crowns following an August funding round. In May, its annual recurring revenue (ARR) reached $500 million, with margins holding at around 65%.

Along with Halgaš, three key Sutro engineers — Max Gfeller, Tony Zhang and Hirad Arshadi — are joining the Swedish team, where they will work on developing the core platform. Halgaš himself will take on the role of technical evangelist, explaining to developers and the wider public how the technology works and what possibilities it opens up for business.

For the Bratislava-born, Oxford-educated entrepreneur, this is far from his first success. Back in 2021, at the age of 28, he and his British partner Nick D'Aloisio sold the communication app Sphere to Twitter (now X). That deal was about bringing communities together; this one is about simplifying software development itself on a global scale. “My first useful piece of software was a website for classmates that helped with math. It was magical to see people using it. Now at Lovable, we get to share that feeling on a scale that was hard to imagine back then,” Halgaš concludes.