Apr 16, 2025
Today we're excited to announce Leonis Capital's investment in Onlook, an AI-powered web design platform that helps teams ship beautiful products at the speed of modern engineering.
While AI has supercharged development velocity, design has become the critical bottleneck. Teams are caught between expensive design talent, fragmented tools, and slow handoff processes that can't keep pace with AI-accelerated engineering.
Onlook's unified platform brings design, development, and AI assistance into a single environment, eliminating traditional handoffs and enabling true collaborative product development. By combining an intuitive visual editor with direct code access and AI capabilities, teams can finally build at the speed that modern tools enable.
The Design Bottleneck in the AI Age
With AI tools like Cursor and Claude Code, engineering teams can now produce code 2-3x faster than before. But design remains slow and costly: even part-time design talent runs $5,000+ per month, while engineers wait days for design iterations and waste hours in back-and-forth discussions trying to align on implementation.
Designers create mockups in tools like Figma, which developers must then interpret and rebuild in separate coding environments. No-code platforms offer visual builders but compromise on flexibility and performance. Neither approach can keep pace with modern engineering velocity.
Insert Onlook: Design that Moves at Engineering Speed
Onlook's unified platform eliminates these communication barriers through three powerful interfaces:
A visual editor that matches the intuitive feel of modern design tools
Direct code access for precise modifications and custom functionality
An AI-powered assistant that automates repetitive tasks and suggests improvements
What sets Onlook apart is not just its three-pronged approach, but also its strong roots in the developer community. As an open-source project with over 9,000 GitHub stars, Onlook has an active community of open-source contributors. This open foundation ensures the platform remains transparent, extensible, and aligned with the real needs of the teams who use it daily.
We made this prototype of our fund’s website in 3min just by chatting with Onlook.
Teams using Onlook report dramatically faster design cycles and smoother collaboration. By unifying design and development in a shared workspace, they can finally build at the speed that modern AI tools enable.
Investing in the Future of Product Design
At Leonis Capital, we've been partnering with category-defining companies at the intersection of creativity and technology. Our investments in Spline, Yarn, and now Onlook reflect our conviction that AI will fundamentally transform creative processes across design domains.
We are thrilled to support Daniel, Kiet, and the Onlook team as they build the next generation of AI-accelerated product design. If you're a product leader or an engineer looking to unlock your team's creative velocity in the AI era, Onlook is the platform for you.
Be the first to know about our industry trends and our research insights.
Our latest insight decks on technological and market trends.
