The first vibe-coded startups are coming up for sale, are buyers ready to value them?

For the last couple of years, vibe coding has mostly been sold as a speed story. AI makes it easier to get software out the door, which means smaller teams, less money and, sometimes, far less technical expertise than used to be required. That was the headline. Now a different question is getting louder: what happens when someone tries to buy one of these companies?

The shift is already visible. In Y Combinator’s Winter 2025 batch, a quarter of startups reportedly had codebases that were 95% AI-generated. These weren’t just non-technical founders leaning on tools to fill gaps. They were highly technical founders, people who a year earlier would have written much of that code themselves. That matters because the next wave of SaaS deals may involve companies built with AI at the core, not as a side helper.

At saas.group, which acquires and operates more than 25 SaaS businesses, AI-assisted codebases are showing up more often among companies on the market. The firm’s view is blunt: AI-generated code is not automatically a red flag. The bigger issue is whether the company actually understands what it built. That line gets fuzzy when a product was shipped quickly and well enough to test demand, but not necessarily with every dependency and decision fully understood.

Dealmakers are already reacting. Bain’s 2026 Global M&A Report found that one in five strategic dealmakers had walked away from a deal because of the expected impact of AI on the target’s business. Almost half of technology deals now have some kind of AI angle. So this is no longer a side conversation in diligence. Buyers are asking how much code was AI-generated, whether the team can explain the architecture, whether the company really owns its intellectual property, and whether someone else could maintain and debug the product after the founder is gone.

That scrutiny does not automatically mean lower prices. A founder who can get to meaningful recurring revenue with two people instead of 20 may have built something unusually efficient. Faster development, lower costs and quicker iteration can make for a very attractive business. But the split is obvious: good acceleration on one side, sloppy understanding on the other. The expensive answer in diligence may end up being, simply, “We don’t really know.”