This AI startup is giving every employee a 10% raise every year, without any performance review

AI startup Lovable has introduced a policy granting full-time employees who meet expectations a 10 per cent salary rise on each work anniversary.

In Short

• Policy covers full-time employees who meet expectations on each anniversary
• Company says longer-serving staff add momentum, knowledge and cultural stability
• Lovable has about 200 employees and plans to double headcount

In a tech industry obsessed with performance ratings and rewarding employees based on how much value they bring to the company, one AI startup has decided to reward employees who simply choose to stay. AI startup Lovable is giving a fixed 10 per cent raise to employees who complete a year with the firm. No drama. No complicated scorecards. No begging your manager for a better rating. Just a direct salary hike for staying on with the company.

The announcement comes from Stockholm-based AI startup, which has said that every full-time employee who meets expectations will automatically receive a 10 per cent salary increase on each work anniversary. “We just introduced a program at Lovable that gives each person in the team a 10% raise on their 1st anniversary,” Lovable CEO and co-founder Anton Osika wrote in a post on X. “Because people get more valuable the longer they stay, and they shouldn't have to worry about getting a raise or not.”

The announcement from Lovable, of a guaranteed salary hike comes at a time when many tech companies are laying off workers in the name of “AI efficiency”. In fact, expecting a meaningful raise has become an exhausting process in itself for many employees. You survive the annual review season, sit through awkward meetings, collect vague feedback like “needs more visibility”, and then hope the final number attached to your appraisal does not ruin your week. Lovable appears to be taking a direct shot at that entire culture.

As for who qualifies for the salary hike, the company told TechCrunch that the policy applies to all full-time employees meeting expectations on their work anniversary. The startup currently has around 200 employees and plans to double that number to 400 by the end of the year.

Of course, there is no free lunch. The move is also a smart retention strategy.

AI startups are currently competing aggressively for talent, especially engineers and product builders who understand AI-native software. Offering predictable raises gives employees one less reason to respond to recruiter messages from competitors.

Meanwhile, as for the company itself, Lovable has recently in years become one of Europe’s fastest-growing AI startups. Founded by Anton Osika, the company is best known for its “vibe-coding” platform, which lets users build apps simply by describing what they want in plain English. Since launching in late 2024, Lovable has reported an increase in annual recurring revenue growth, at one point increasing ARR by $100 million in a single month.

That growth has turned Lovable into one of the hottest names in the AI startup world. But this week, the thing getting the most attention is not its AI product.

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