The archive · Developer & Business Tools · Product decision · 2024–2026
Teable bets AI-on-Postgres spreadsheets beat Airtable; 20k stars, angel round
Ex-Feishu Bitable founder Chen Jiabei's third spreadsheet-database build: open-source Postgres plus AI Database Agent, then multi-million-dollar angel round.
Teable
What the business is
Teable is an open-source (AGPL) AI spreadsheet-database platform: a spreadsheet interface over PostgreSQL with AI chat, an app builder, automations, real-time collaboration and enterprise governance, sold as cloud or self-hosted
How it started
Chen Jiabei has spent most of his career in the multi-dimensional spreadsheet category: a founding member of Feishu's Bitable (飞书多维表格), then co-founder and CTO of Vika (维格表). Teable was his third rebuild, aimed at what he called the category's impossible triangle — large data volumes, real-time multi-user collaboration and usability at once. He built and open-sourced it without funding; the Show HN of 2024-03-11 drew 279 points and 94 comments, and investors later said the unfunded product had users in more than 100 countries.
What happened
The open-source repository grew to roughly 20k GitHub stars, topped GitHub Trending's daily list around launch, passed 500k+ prebuilt-package downloads and made Runa Capital's global open-source growth ranking. On 2025-09-16 (North America time) Teable released 2.0, an AI Database Agent that builds tables from natural-language descriptions, generates runnable business apps, extracts structured data from files such as invoices and contracts, and answers analytics questions without SQL. Days later the company announced a multi-million-dollar angel round (数百万美元) from ZhenFund, Baidu Ventures and Vertex Ventures, earmarked for global expansion and core engine and product R&D.
How it ended up
Teable is live and scaling: angel-funded as of September 2025, with an open-source AGPL community edition free to self-host and paid plans unlocking AI features and advanced enterprise capabilities.
Background
Teable is an open-source startup betting that the spreadsheet is the winning interface for business data if what sits underneath is a real database and the AI is native to it. The product pairs a spreadsheet-like grid with PostgreSQL underneath, adds AI chat, an app builder, automations and real-time collaboration, and ships as an AGPL community edition for self-hosting plus paid cloud and enterprise tiers.
Founder Chen Jiabei built the category three times: he was a founding member of Feishu's Bitable, co-founder and CTO of Vika, and then started Teable to break what he called the impossible triangle — large data volumes, real-time multi-user collaboration and usability cannot normally all hold at once. He built Teable without funding; its Show HN on 2024-03-11 drew 279 points and 94 comments, and investors later said the unfunded product had attracted users in more than 100 countries.
By September 2025, coverage said the repository had about 20k GitHub stars, had topped GitHub Trending's daily list at launch, logged 500k+ prebuilt downloads and made Runa Capital's global open-source growth list. On 2025-09-16 Teable released 2.0, an AI Database Agent that builds tables from natural language, generates deployable business apps, extracts structured data from invoices and contracts, and answers analytics questions without SQL.
Days after the 2.0 launch, Teable announced a multi-million-dollar angel round from ZhenFund, Baidu Ventures and Vertex Ventures, earmarked for global expansion and engine R&D. As of 2026-09-05 the project remains live, with the README describing an AI spreadsheet platform where agents work inside live, governed data rather than in disconnected app-generation demos.
What has to be true
- A spreadsheet interface lowers the barrier to entry while PostgreSQL underneath keeps scale, permissions and audit real, attacking the volume × collaboration × usability triangle head-on
- Making AI operate live data with the same governance differs from vibe-coding tools that generate a front end and leave the data stack disconnected
- Open source came first, funding later: users in 100+ countries, ~20k stars and a Runa Capital growth-list placement gave global distribution and proof before the angel round
- A founder who had already built the category twice knew enterprise blockers like data sovereignty and compliance, so self-hosting and license-based deployment were designed in from the start
What can be applied
Rebuilding the same category three times paid off because each iteration attacked a harder constraint — data scale, collaboration, then AI on live data — and open source built the global base first
Aftermath
As of 2026-09-05, Teable remains live. The GitHub README positions it as an AI spreadsheet for business, with an AGPL community edition and paid plans. The multi-million-dollar angel round from ZhenFund, Baidu Ventures and Vertex Ventures was announced mid-September 2025 for global expansion and engine R&D. No revenue or valuation disclosed; dated figures include ~20k GitHub stars and 500k+ downloads.
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