Monzo co-founder launches AI startup with ambitions to put software developers out of business

Monzo co-founder Jonas Templestein has commenced a new journey with a fresh startup seeking to put software developers out of business.

With fundraising efforts underway and drawing support from OpenAI and Index Ventures amongst others, Nustom wants to take full advantage of artificial intelligence (AI), in return for low or no-code web development. The company has launched its website, is recruiting and has set out its vision, stating within the next decade “the majority of software will be made by people with no technical background, collaborating with an AI.”

It is presenting an end-to-end SaaS offering for “those who want software made, but don’t have experience building or running it.”

The new direction for Templestein, comes at a time when Monzo is thriving. He is joined by co-founder Oliver Beattie, formerly Monzo’s VP of architecture.

Founded in 2015, the digital bank now boasts more than nine million customers and has reached a stage where it is profitable.

The company is said to be on the cusp of selling an additional stake to one of Singapore’s sovereign wealth funds, on the back of securing a £4 billion valuation last month. The top-up to the recent funding round is expected to bring in an additional $50 million from the Singaporean entity, in exchange for the issue of new shares.

Does this mean Nustom won’t be working with software developers?

Not quite, not yet anyway.

Despite the lofty ambitions of the startup, the company will “have human engineers guarantee the quality of the software until our AI agents are reliable enough to do it without assistance.”

Maria Campbell has become the third executive at Nustom, taking up the position of COO. She joins her former colleagues and Monzo alumni, having also worked at GoCardless and banking-as-a-service fintech Griffin.

The founding team at Nustom is completed with two engineers.

Fred Jonsson is another with a background at Monzo, whilst Eugenio Marchiori is the only individual not to have such a link. He is a PhD computer scientist with over ten years of experience at Google.

Image credit: Monzo

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