Tempo is Enabling Designers and Developers to Collaborate Better on Code

Tempo, a visual editor for React that gives PMs, designers, and engineers the ability to collaborate visually on code, led by Kevin Michael and Peter Gokhshteyn, has secured $5 million in seed round from Golden Ventures, Y Combinator, Box Group, Webflow Ventures, Inovia, General Catalyst, Singularity Capital, Union Capital, 89 Christopher, Lenny Rachitsky, and many others.

As AI advances, design and engineering are converging faster than ever, but existing tools haven’t kept pace. Static, image-based mockups fall out of sync with code, while “vibe-coding” tools lack the depth, precision, and integration designers need. The result: frustrating hand-offs and a flood of AI output that rarely reaches production.

Cross-functional teams need to stop creating throwaway prototypes and start collaborating directly in production code. By working inside the same codebase, designers and PMs can eliminate hand-offs, let engineers focus on complex architecture, and dramatically increase both the speed and quality of what ships.

Tempo enables this by giving teams a shared environment where every pixel is real, no redlines, exports, or hand-offs, just a continuous, collaborative loop between design and engineering.

Code is emerging as a key medium for designers, a shared canvas for the web, but existing tools lack the depth, fidelity, and precision required by professionals. Prompting alone is insufficient.

An infinite, code-first canvas is being developed with full layout control, component systems, advanced styling, and visual editing, while supporting creative exploration. Human designers remain central, iterating by hand and shaping products with intent, precision, and taste, defining the future of design.

Every designer working on software products is becoming a design engineer, and tools are evolving to empower that shift. Tempo enables designing and collaborating directly on production code, with daily updates during its beta phase. Over 100,000 creations have already been built using the platform, showcasing the potential of this new approach to design and engineering collaboration.