What is Vibe Coding? Who coined the word? Why are Sundar Pichai, Sridhar Vembu debating over it?

A new buzzword has taken over tech town, and several tech CEOs and other executives have an opinion about it. “Vibe coding” has gained popularity in the recent times, with users ranging from individuals to companies making use of the new AI tool.

Not just in terms of use in the AI field, vibe coding has also taken over tech leaders ranging from Google CEO Sundar Pichai to Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu.

Here is everything you need to know about vibe coding.

What is vibe coding?

Vibe coding is a latest tech language and refers to the method of software development using AI, simply by mentioning what you want to it in natural language.

Vibe coding heavily incorporates the use of large language models (LLMs) for generating code to create the software.

It makes coding easier for everyone as vibe coding removes the requirement of learning complicated languages including Python or JavaScript. Instead, users can tell the AI just what they want, and it builds the application as per requirement.

The goal of vibe coding is to spin up working applications and new features more quickly using AI.

The vibe coding user however has to provide the AI with the right prompts for it to create the right kind of feature or application.

Who coined the word vibe coding?

The term ‘vibe coding’ was coined by Andrej Karpathy, a co-founder of OpenAI, in February 2025. Writing a post on X, Karpathy noted that vibe coding is coming into play due to outstanding LLMs.

“There’s a new kind of coding I call “vibe coding”, where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists. It’s possible because the LLMs (e.g. Cursor Composer w Sonnet) are getting too good,” he wrote.

Since then, vibe coding quickly moved from a niche concept to a mainstream trend.

“It’s not too bad for throwaway weekend projects, but still quite amusing. I’m building a project or webapp, but it’s not really coding – I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy paste stuff, and it mostly works,” Karpathy wrote at the time.

What are some popular vibe coding tools?

A number of widely used LLMs offer vibe coding options. These include Copilot, Cursor, Codeium, Qodo, CodeWhisperer, and Replit among others.

What Sundar Pichai said about vibe coding?

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has also spoken on vibe coding, with the tech term taking over the Silicon Valley in recent times.

In a recent interview on the Google for Developers podcast with Logan Kilpatrick, he shared his take on vibe coding.

“It’s making coding so much more enjoyable,” Pichai said. “Things are getting more approachable, it’s getting exciting again, and the amazing thing is, it’s only going to get better.”

Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu’s stance on vibe coding

While vibe coding is the newest trend taking over the tech and AI space, not everyone is convinced by it. Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu said vibe coding oversimplifies what is essentially a deeply layered concept.

“All code is magic until it is lowered by the compiler to another form of code, and that code is magic until magic all the way down,” he said in a post on X.

Vibe coding is a reflection of a world where human-AI collaboration will take over traditional manual programming.